Darius Rochebin, featured presenter on the French channel LCI, withdrew his criminal defamation complaint against

Le Temps

, after an amicable settlement with the former owner of the leading newspaper in French-speaking Switzerland, the Ringier group.

Darius Rochebin, who has always denied the accusations of sexual harassment put forward by the daily and who was exonerated by an internal investigation by his former employer, the French-speaking Swiss Radio Television (RTS), did not respond in the immediate request for comment from AFP.

Darius Rochebin's lawyer, Me Vincent Solari, confirmed to the Keystone-ATS agency the amicable agreement with Ringier, one of the largest Swiss press groups, which owned the daily at the time of publication of this report. investigation in October 2020 on sexual harassment at RTS.

A Ringier spokesperson also confirmed the conclusion of an agreement that "ends the litigation" at the agency.

The two men declined to give details on the terms of the agreement.

The daily's website maintains its article "unchanged"

On its website, the leading daily in Suisse Romande, indicates that it "takes note of the withdrawal of the complaint", but maintains its article "unchanged" and recalls that "the quality of this journalistic work has been rewarded by two Swiss Press Awards ”. 

Le Temps

has changed ownership since the publication of the survey and is now controlled by the Aventinus Foundation. He specifies that he had no part in the agreement and that he had no knowledge of the content.

The survey, published at the end of October 2020 had caused a stir in French-speaking Switzerland, where Darius Rochebin was for many years the admired and respected presenter of the great TV news event in French-speaking Switzerland, the "7:30 PM". However, the investigation went beyond the case of Darius Rochebin and had pushed the public channel RTS to react by launching an investigation and taking sanctions, but also by announcing internal reforms to avoid this kind of failure.

Darius Rochebin had withdrawn from the LCI antenna after the publication of the article but had finally returned to his chair in April after being exonerated by the internal investigation of the RTS.

In his case, "none of the testimonies collected allows one to conclude that acts relating to sexual or psychological harassment, personality attack or any criminal offense", underlined the conclusions of the investigation.

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Media

Darius Rochebin files a complaint against "Le Temps" for defamation

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