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Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni issued a sharp rebuke of a Swiss hospital on Tuesday for allegedly billing the families of some of the victims in a devastating fire at a bar in the Alpine skiing resort of Crans-Montana on New Year’s Eve.
“I spoke with our ambassador: the Swiss authorities have assured us that it was a mistake, and that the families will not have to pay anything,” Meloni wrote in a post on X.
“But I asked the ambassador to maintain the highest level of attention to this issue, because it would be abhorrent for costs like these to fall on the victims or on Italy.”
Meloni also said that one hospital in Sion had demanded €70,000 for patients hospitalised for only a few hours, which she called “an insult on top of a mockery”.
The blaze at Le Constellation, a bar in the upmarket Alpine resort, broke out in the early hours of 1 January as people celebrated the New Year.
A total of 41 people, most of them teenagers, were killed, and another 115 were injured in the disaster.
Nine people are under criminal investigation in the case.
They include the bar’s French owners, husband and wife Jacques and Jessica Moretti, who face charges of manslaughter by negligence, bodily harm by negligence and arson by negligence.
They have twice been questioned at length by public prosecutors and lawyers for the civil parties.
In January, Meloni and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said they asked Rome’s ambassador to Switzerland to contact regional public prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud and convey their “strong indignation” over the decision to free Jacques Moretti on bail.
Italy has also recalled its ambassador to Switzerland to “determine what further measures to take”, the statement said.
Vice President of the Swiss Federal Council Ignazio Cassis responded on social media platform X that “we understand the pain, because it’s our pain too,” adding that he had spoken to Tajani, with the two of them reaffirming “Switzerland and Italy’s willingness to support each other in this shared tragedy.”
Prosecutors believe the fire started when champagne bottles with attached sparklers were raised too close to the ceiling in the bar’s basement, igniting the sound-insulation foam.
The municipality sparked outrage on 6 January when it revealed that no annual safety check had been conducted at the bar since 2019.