Crans Montana: When the Government Begins to Behave Like a Cartel
On January 1, 2026, shortly after one in the morning, a fire broke out in a cellar bar in Crans Montana, canton Valais. Within minutes, smoke turned the room into a sealed container. Forty people died. Nearly half were minors. Some were fourteen.
For Switzerland, this was not just a tragedy. It punctured a national myth.
We believe in layered regulation. In inspections. In redundancy. We believe that even if individuals fail, structures compensate.
The bar was in a cellar. Renovations were carried out without serious professional oversight. Flammable acoustic material was installed in the ceiling. The main staircase, the primary escape route, had been narrowed. The emergency exit was reportedly locked, poorly marked, or unusable.
The space became a trap in seconds.
This configuration should never have passed inspection. It did not pass cleanly. Certain deficiencies were formally noted. Others, including the flammable foam used for sound insulation, were simply overlooked. No follow-up inspection ever took place. In the years that followed, the bar was not checked again.
In Valais, unlike in most other cantons, fire safety oversight lies largely with municipalities. In small communities, this produces a predictable distortion. Everyone knows everyone. Enforcement feels personal. Strict control feels unfriendly. Oversight becomes socially expensive. Officially, this dynamic is never acknowledged. Unofficially, it is widely understood.
During the investigation, a detail surfaced that gradually shaped public perception: a municipal security official told prosecutors that a “computer mess” had prevented effective control. Missing data. Software problems. The inspection documentation system had been outsourced.
Soon the narrative crystallized around one man. An IT contractor. A one-person company. No backup administrator. No redundancy. When he reportedly developed severe psychological problems, access to inspection data was lost. Later, allegations of attempted blackmail emerged. Court proceedings followed. He was deemed not fully responsible due to mental incapacity. Large portions of the data could not be restored.
Public governance chaos was compressed into a personality.
Yet the contractor did not hold sovereign authority. Municipalities selected the system. Municipalities accepted the absence of redundancy. Municipalities bore responsibility for safeguarding their records.
Dependence on a single individual was not fate. It was design.
The canton now emphasizes that fire safety oversight is a communal competency and therefore outside cantonal intervention. At the same time, it admits it does not know which municipalities might face similar data gaps.
If critical safety oversight depends on one external individual without independent verification, the failure is structural long before it becomes personal.
When journalists contacted more than a dozen municipalities in Valais to ask whether they too had lost inspection data, most did not respond.
Silence became the dominant answer.
Meanwhile, Italian media have launched sustained criticism. They speak of patronage in Valais. Of slow investigations. Of overwhelmed prosecutors. The Italian government has echoed this frustration. Many of the victims were Italian.
In Switzerland, the reaction has been defensive. A sense of wounded innocence. Yet for decades Swiss commentary looked south with restrained contempt. Italy was the cautionary tale. Patronage. Informal networks. No reliable boundary between organized crime and state authority. Switzerland, by contrast, was orderly. Transparent. Above such things.
Now the mirror has turned.
This is where discomfort begins. What happens when public authorities behave like closed systems?
Political sociologist Charles Tilly argued that state-making resembles organized crime structurally. Both claim to provide protection. Both centralize control. Both manage threats and isolate liability. The difference lies in legitimacy, not in basic logic. No conspiracy is required.
Organized crime isolates fall guys. It externalizes blame. It fragments responsibility while insulating the core.
When governance begins to operate in similar patterns, legitimacy thins.
In small regions, the dynamic intensifies. Political, administrative, and social networks overlap. Pressing too hard carries cost. Controlling the narrative becomes safer than exposing structural weakness. Several years without inspection dissolve into corrupted files. Systemic fragility shrinks into the story of psychological instability. Structural design disappears behind the portrait of one broken man.
The canton of Valais says the problem has been fixed. The new software provider is not a one-person company. The system is reportedly used in multiple cantons.
Perhaps.
But reform after catastrophe does not answer the central question.
How was such fragility tolerated in the first place?
If the conversation ends with one government contractor’s mental instability, governance escapes scrutiny behind a convenient alibi. If outrage dissolves into cross-border rivalry, structural design remains untouched.
The issue is not whether one IT entrepreneur failed.
The issue is whether a system that prides itself on order is capable of examining its own proximity, its own networks, its own reflex to protect itself first.
The real question is simple:
When pressure rises, does the government protect truth, or does it close ranks and default to criminal logic, designate a fall guy, and secure its core?