The Sunderland star Granit Xhaka is reportedly under investigation in his home country Switzerland for having obtained a fake COVID-19 vaccination certificate. According to the Swiss tabloid Blick, Xhaka is suspected of having obtained the certificate from a doctor in Lucerne whose offices were raided by the police in 2023 and who is herself suspected of having provided fake vaccination certificates to various patients.
Contacted by Blick, the Lucerne public prosecutor’s office confirmed the existence of the investigation and specified that their purpose was to “determine whether a criminal offence has taken place in connection with the possible obtaining of a fake certificate and/or forgery of documents”. Xhaka is reportedly due to be questioned by the police in early October. He is the captain of the Swiss national football team, which is scheduled to play against North Macedonia in the Nations League on October 6th.
Xhaka’s spokesperson Andreas Bantel told Blick that Xhaka is cooperating with the authorities and added that Xhaka had “confirmation from the responsible physician that he was vaccinated against COVID-19 for the first time on January 25th 2022 and the second time on November 11th 2022”. Prior to that, he reportedly twice tested positive for COVID-19 and had to miss matches as a consequence, including a January 9th 2022 FA Cup match against Nottingham Forest.
Two months later, in March 2022, Xhaka told the Swiss free daily 20 Minuten, “Yes, I’m vaccinated, so that you don’t have anything more to write about.”
The coach of the Swiss national hockey team, Patrick Fischer, was let go last April after it emerged that he had used a fake COVID-19 vaccination certificate to travel to the Winter Olympics in China in 2022.
John Rosenthal is a journalist and political analyst who writes on European politics and transatlantic issues. You can subscribe to his Transatlantic Intelligencer Substack here.
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Totalitarianism in action.
The whole farrago of lies was awful, and this attempt to criminalise him just makes things worse.
Fake certificate for a fake life-threatening disease.
Who cares the whole thing was a scam from the start? Good for him although it would have been better to have been honest like Djokovic.
How is having a fake certficate for a fake vaccine against the law?
Succinctly put!
Good question.
Some things are best forgotten and/or swept under the carpet. This is one of them. Nobody in their right mind is glad they had the clot shots now.
Thank god he did not take the unsafe and ineffective jabs. He could be dead, like so many of his athletic brothers and sisters.
Unfortunately it seems he may well have had one later on.
A fake Covid jab certificate? Gosh.
At least he didn’t collapse on the field clutching his chest. Now that really would be serious.
I considered getting a fake cert, but decided doing so was accepting the regime.
To a great many colleague’s surprise, I continued working offshore, including abroad. “But I thought we HAD to take it!”
Still, each to their own. Fair play to this footballer, and his Doctor. Sensible people.
Exactly, like wearing a lanyard.
I found three covid jab registration cards on the pavement, each marked as having had the jab. So i kept them. Still got them, though I never got the jab.
So effing what! Lots of people did that to get around the ridiculous rules to enter premises such as essential shops. The whole thing was at best unscientific and the vaccines useless. Most people have put it all behind them and moved on. So should they.
Oh for god’s sake, let it go…
And the rest. Unlucky that this doctor and this elite sportsman have been singled out. Countless others did the same I’m sure but only Djokovic was honest about refusing it and not pretending otherwise.
Yes, whenever I want to check my morals, I think first and foremost, what would the Swiss do?
What would the guys that helped the Nazi’s hide away the wealth they stole from the Jews they killed?
What would those people who claimed to stand for banking secrecy and then sold out everybody at the drop of a hat the moment they were threatened with being cut off from the swift system.
The Swiss, those shining examples of ethics. If there is one thing the Swiss won’t stand for is lying and deception…
I believe they were not hard to obtain in the U.K.- a few hundred quid each
Just kept my eyes open and picked up three jab cards, all ticked off, from the pavement.
The whole pandemic was fake!
Oh well, that’s Switzerland crossed off my list of places to leave the UK for if Communist Uniparty tyranny continues here. But at least the citizenry have the right to bear arms.
A duty, I thought?
Does it matter, even a tiny bit..?
At the height of Covid, I shamelessly chose to wear a sunflower lanyard to ward off the ‘you’re supposed to wear a mask’ tyrants. Shamelessly wore it, as in I felt no shame and would do it again.
Yes, although it should not have been necessary to wear anything at all to indicate refusal to comply.
It wasn’t necessary to wear anything. I just told shop assistants etc that I had a hidden disability that meant I couldn’t wear a mask, not true, and that the nature of my disability was confidential medical information that the law said I didn’t have to reveal, this was true.
The trouble with that is that you are reduced to lying. I found that saying “I don’t wear masks” while sweeping past, was enough. If challenged, simply repeat yourself
Lanyards are a bit of a cop out too.
What’s the “magic” of a sunflower lanyard?
I did for a while, then realised it was just reinforcing the bollocks, so I stopped. I don’t think I would wear one again if there is a next time.
I don’t think that they would attempt to try it on again.
Give the man a medal… and the doctor too.
Investigated for having a false certificate for a “vaccine” which is also false during a false pandemic. Now that is funny. Next they’ll be investigating perfectly healthy athletes under suspicion of not having symptoms of myocarditis or unexpected heart attacks.