The company Swiss Space Systems (S3) received financial backing from a fictitious bank as it unsuccessfully fought against bankruptcy, according to media reports. S3, which promised simulated space flights to the public, collapsed in 2017 amid much controversy. The Tages Anzeiger and 24 Heures newspapers reported on Thursday that S3 was given fake guarantees of CHF30 million ($30 million) by the bogus Axios Credit Bank, which originated in Gambia and had addresses in other countries. But researchers have concluded that the bank never existed as a real financial institution. “We saw that the bank was hosted on a server where there were many other financial institutions, and that there were inconsistencies, for example between the name of a bank, which claimed to be Swiss, and its place of residence, New Zealand,” Steven Meyer, business intelligence specialist at Zen Data, told 24 Heures. “As we dug further, we saw that Axios Credit Bank had only one employee, who had 53 contacts.
