Font ResizeA Swiss billionaire who in July stepped down as the chairman of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance board of directors is directly involved in a federal criminal prosecution in Pennsylvania of a company accused of illegal medical testing that led to three deaths.
Hansjörg Wyss, who joined the SUWA board in 1996 and has been a major donor to several conservation groups in the West, is the third SUWA board member in two years to run afoul of the Justice Department.
Wyss hasn't been involved in the organization's day-to-day wilderness advocacy, SUWA supporters and a persistent critic acknowledge. But the prosecution of his company could place SUWA and a new panel recently established by Gov. Gary Herbert in a political quagmire the governor wants to escape.
In 2008, Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, and 44 other Utah lawmakers wrote a letter to Wyss demanding details of any financial dealings with board treasurer Mark Ristow and board member Bert Fingerhut who in 2007 pleaded guilty to separate federal charges of making millions of illegal dollars by circumventing banking regulations. Ristow was sentenced to 20 months in prison, Fingerhut two years.
The next day, Noel during an angry Capitol news conference accused SUWA of being a "shadow government" and claimed staff attorney Steve Bloch lied in a federal courtroom.
Last week, Herbert announced Noel would be a volunteer on the new Balanced Resource Council. The governor also hired to
Wilson said he doesn't see why the panel should take up time on Wyss's legal troubles. "There are too many substantive issues everyone would like to see resolved," he said. "Hopefully this will not come in the way of that."
Herbert spokeswoman Angie Welling said, "We don't see a connection here" with SUWA in an unrelated criminal investigation in Pennsylvania. "The principals on the board are not SUWA board members currently."
Wilson said Wyss, "a lovely man," was instrumental in negotiations that led to wilderness designation in Washington County via a bill Republican Sen. Bob Bennett cosponsored with 2nd District Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah.
The June 16 grand jury indictment charges a subsidiary of Wyss' company, Synthes Inc., with 52 felony counts on accusations the company engaged in illegal "off-label" use of a bone cement in spinal surgeries. Three patients died on operating tables in 2003 and 2004 during surgeries while company sales representatives looked on, the indictment says.
Wyss isn't named in the indictment, which refers to "Person No. 7" as the company CEO and major shareholder who approved going forward with the off-label use without clinical testing the Food and Drug Administration demanded. The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported a company official identified Wyss as the CEO.
On the day the indictment was announced, Synthes Inc. issued a statement saying the company "has fully cooperated with the government's investigation" and "intends to vigorously defend itself against the charges.
Wyss remains on the SUWA board but stepped down as chairman in July, said Scott Groene, SUWA's executive director.
The indictment "has nothing to do with SUWA and we don't know anything about the particulars, " Groene said.
Wyss paid for SUWA's new $1.4 million headquarters in Salt Lake City and along with other benefactors helped swell SUWA's coffers to about $5.4 million, according to 2008 tax filings posted on SUWA's Web site.
Noel, an avowed opponent of SUWA lawsuits defending wilderness-quality public lands from industrial and off-road recreational damage, acknowledged it is a staff-driven organization. "I'm not sure actually how much input the board members have," he said.
At the same time, he said, "maybe it's time for the [SUWA] board to clean up their own act before they come after the state of Utah, the counties, on things they're supposedly doing illegally."
"They don't want their people getting indicted. When you pick those people, you want personal integrity," Noel added. "I'm going to take Ted at face value that he's going to do his best to find this common ground, without going to court, without the recriminations."
Wilson said SUWA board members undergo thorough vetting. "SUWA is quite deliberate about picking its people," he said.
Last year, Wyss gave Harvard University $125 million -- Harvard's largest-ever donation --to create the Hansjörg Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Wyss has his own foundation which provides scholarships for graduate students in conservation. Forbes magazine says Wyss, worth about $8 billion, led Synthes "to the fore of medical technology" as an international firm for biotech and surgical implants.
Wyss also serves on the boards of The Wilderness Society, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Grand Canyon Trust.
Bill Hedden, the Trust's executive director, said Wyss hadn't attended a board meeting for about four years but has underwritten the Trust's losses on grazing allotments it bought on the historic Kane and Two Mile ranches that span 850,000 acres on the Utah-Arizona border
"I've gone hiking with Hansjorg," Hedden said. "This [federal prosecution] is not a side of him we have anything to do with. He's someone who knows the land and the issues and cares very passionately about them."
Wyss has served as an international elections observer, endowed museums in Europe, worked to save brown bears in Romania and promoted peace in Africa.
"He's a world famous philanthropist," Hedden said. "If he were actually convicted of a crime and it affected his giving, it would affect people all across the world."
