Barbershops in Geneva and Lausanne at the centre of a money-laundering case

On social media, the W* Barbershop salons present themselves as trendy venues. Their Instagram and Facebook pages show celebrities from sport and music getting their hair cut.

In Switzerland, two W* salons opened in Lausanne and Geneva at the start of the 2020s. According to documents from the Geneva public prosecutor's office, revealed by an RTS investigation, these outlets allegedly conceal a network for laundering money from drug trafficking. For Switzerland, the case is unusual: barbershops rarely end up in court.

The trial in Geneva

In June 2026, the two former owners of the W* Barbershops and two accomplices appeared before the Geneva court in an abbreviated procedure. However, the court did not approve the plea agreement reached between the defendants and the public prosecutor, and sent the case to ordinary proceedings. The defendants now risk several years in prison. They deny the charges and benefit from the presumption of innocence. The new trial is expected to take place by the end of the year.

The case began at a customs checkpoint on the Geneva border. In February 2021, at dawn, one of the defendants was stopped while driving a rental car. On the back seat was a plastic bag full of bundles of banknotes: 156’680 euros and 250’260 Swiss francs. According to the police, part of that money came from drug trafficking.

Court documents state that «ingenti somme di denaro provento del traffico sono state investite in società in Svizzera, in particolare nei barbershop di Ginevra e Losanna» (in substance: large sums from drug trafficking were invested in Swiss companies, in particular in the barbershops in Geneva and Lausanne). According to the same documents, the company W* Barbershop was run with the sole purpose of laundering drug-trafficking money. This was meant to simulate a legitimate origin for the funds and to allow deposits into Swiss bank accounts. It also served to justify the defendants' large earnings and high standard of living.

The suspects are believed to have taken part in a large drug-trafficking operation between French-speaking Switzerland and France. The quantities cited are more than thirty kilograms of uncut cocaine and about 1,000 kilograms of cannabis-based substances, including hashish and marijuana. The suspects also allegedly operated in the parallel market for luxury watches, with transactions worth over 800’000 francs, in particular involving brands such as Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe. One defendant also allegedly invested several hundred thousand francs and euros in real estate in Morocco.

Alexandre Brahier, spokesperson for the Geneva cantonal police, did not directly comment on the case with RTS. However, he stressed how complex this type of investigation is: «In Svizzera spetta alla giustizia dimostrare che il denaro dei criminali è sporco, mentre in Francia o in Italia tocca all’imputato provare che la provenienza del denaro è lecita» (in substance: in Switzerland the justice system must prove that criminals' money is dirty, whereas in France or Italy the defendant must prove that the money's origin is legitimate).

Since the suspects were arrested, the two Swiss salons have closed. Online, a new venue presented itself as the successor to the Geneva salon, under a different name and with new management. According to RTS, one of the new managers left Switzerland in a hurry in recent months to settle abroad. In the Pâquis district, residents report repeated police checks and raids at the venue. The business is now officially bankrupt.

According to neighbours, however, some customers still go to the salon to get their hair cut. The barbershop and the new owner, contacted several times, did not reply to RTS's requests for an interview.