Albanian businessman from Switzerland suspected of financing radical Islamist groups

Albanian businessman Arben Ademi, who lives in Switzerland and is the director of the perfume manufacturing company Gisada, is suspected of having financed radical Islamist groups, Swiss media report. Ademi firmly denies all allegations.

Gisada is a leading Swiss company in the perfume market. It is run by Arben Ademi, who built it from scratch, but suspicions have now emerged that cast a shadow over this success story.

Investigations by the Swiss Federal Criminal Police and research conducted by the investigative team of Tamedia, as well as CH Media, indicate that Ademi has links to extremist Islamists, the Swiss portal 20 Minuten reports.

Financier of suspicious Quran distribution campaigns?

Ademi and his brother allegedly took part in a Quran distribution campaign called Lies!. Since 2012, “Lies!” had operated stands on Swiss shopping streets. At the same time, “Lies!” served as a recruitment tool for Islamic State. According to the German Ministry of the Interior, 140 men who participated in these campaigns later joined the terrorist organization. Several such cases are known from Winterthur and its surroundings.

The Swiss Federal Criminal Police accuse Arben Ademi of having supported the Quran distribution campaign with “significant sums of money.” It is also alleged that he financially assisted the travel of a convicted Islamist to the Islamic State.

Contact with a convicted helper of the Islamic State

Sandro V. was sentenced to 36 months in prison for supporting the Islamic State. He attended the same primary school as Arben Ademi. However, Ademi says he was never friends with V. The Swiss Federal Criminal Police largely base these findings on seized text messages from proceedings against third parties.

In 2013, Sandro V. traveled to Bosnia and Herzegovina in an official vehicle belonging to Arben Ademi’s telecommunications company. He was accompanied by a Dutch national from Winterthur and one of Ademi’s relatives. According to the report of the Swiss Federal Criminal Police, they visited radical preacher Bilal Bosnjak.

After that trip, V. and the Dutch national traveled to a training camp for Islamist fighters in Syria. According to the Swiss Federal Criminal Police report, Ademi financially supported the trip to Syria with up to CHF 10,000. In 2014, at V.’s request, Ademi allegedly made another payment of more than CHF 10,000 for the printing and transport costs of Qurans.

Arben Ademi denies the allegations. He stated that he was shocked to see his name appear in the files of the Swiss Federal Criminal Police. He says he has never been questioned in connection with Islamist activities of third parties.

“Furthermore, no proceedings have ever been initiated against me on that basis. There were no financial donations for Qurans on my part,” he adds.

He also claims that he never participated in Quran distribution campaigns, even though one video shows him next to a “Lies!” stand on Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich.

Ademi says that he only stopped there briefly as a passerby. Overall, he states that all allegations are “untrue” and that this is likely precisely why they have never been the subject of proceedings against him.