At Innosuisse, those who allocate grants benefit from them too

Innosuisse supports innovation in Switzerland with an annual budget of around 300 million francs, allocated through its own Innovation Council. An analysis of the federal Aramis database by RTS identified around twenty grants awarded to companies linked to people who sit on the agency's governing bodies.

One case involves a member of the Innovation Council who simultaneously runs several companies. These received around one million francs in 2021 and in 2024 were admitted to one of the agency's flagship programmes, with the possibility of receiving up to 2.5 million francs.

Asked by RTS, Innosuisse acknowledges that such situations can occur. The agency attributes this to its recruitment process, which selects Council members from recognised figures in the sector to ensure specific expertise. It also points to existing rules on conflicts of interest: anyone with direct ties to a project must declare them and step aside from the decision.

Decisions concentrated in a few hands

Documents obtained under the Transparency Act show that the power to award funding is often concentrated in groups of no more than five people. In one case examined, two Council members each took turns three times evaluating projects linked to the other, recusing themselves each time; on two other occasions, each was responsible for the other's dossier. All the applications were approved.

For sociologist Yves Gingras, an expert in research evaluation, leaving decisions to such small groups remains problematic, especially when their members submit applications for their own companies.

A second case concerns the 20-million-franc collaboration recently launched with Armasuisse for dual civilian and military use technologies. Two members of Innosuisse's Board of Directors have interests in two of the three selected fields. Among them is chairman André Kudelski, who also heads the Kudelski Group, a supplier of security components to navigation chip makers such as the Swiss company U-blox, a field included in the call. Kudelski also chairs Montreux Media Ventures, a company that received 440,000 francs from the agency. For governance expert Dominique Freymond, a conflict of interest does exist in this case, even though the formal decision rests with the Innovation Council rather than the Board of Directors.

The Federal Department of Economic Affairs, led by Guy Parmelin, appoints Innosuisse's Board of Directors but denies having a direct oversight role over the agency's activities, pointing instead to its internal risk management system. The Swiss Federal Audit Office, for its part, states that it only checks whether such a system exists, not how it is actually applied.

The question remains open of who should ensure effective oversight of public funds allocated by a small number of people, and how to prevent competition among beneficiaries from suffering as a result.