By John Revill<\/p>\n
BERN, April 24 (Reuters) – The Swiss National Bank should sell its $1.1 billion stake in Palantir Technologies, campaigners from Minneapolis said at a meeting of the \u200ccentral bank on Friday, citing the firm’s involvement in U.S. immigration enforcement operations.<\/p>\n
The \u200cSNB held 6.24 million Palantir shares at the end of 2025 as part of its 725 billion Swiss franc ($922 \u200bbillion) foreign currency investments, according to the latest filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n
Palantir, a data analytics firm co-founded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, won a contract last year with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to develop surveillance systems.<\/p>\n
Its work has come under scrutiny following the fatal \u200cshootings of two U.S. citizens in \u2060separate incidents involving immigration officials in Minneapolis in January.<\/p>\n
A delegation from Minneapolis travelled to the SNB shareholders’ meeting in Bern on Friday to present \u2060the city council’s request that the central bank sever ties to Palantir over its links to ICE and surveillance activities.<\/p>\n
“Palantir is a threat to our democracy, not just in the United States, but \u200baround the \u200bworld,” said Janette Corcelius, a member of the \u200bdelegation who was invited to the \u200cSNB meeting by campaign group BreakFree Suisse.<\/p>\n
Palantir did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Its CEO, Alex Karp, earlier this year defended the firm’s surveillance technology, saying it has safeguards to prevent government overreach.<\/p>\n
In a letter to shareholders, he said Palantir’s technology ensures the “state and its agents can see only what ought to be seen.”<\/p>\n
The SNB, which carries out regular reviews of its \u200choldings, declined to comment on individual assets.<\/p>\n
It has built \u200bup a large portfolio of foreign stocks while investing \u200bits currency reserves, buying shares to reflect \u200btheir weighting in global markets rather than picking individual companies.<\/p>\n
Under its guidelines, \u200cthe central bank says it does not \u200binvest in companies that \u200bgrossly violate commonly held Swiss values, seriously breach fundamental human rights or systematically cause severe environmental damage.<\/p>\n
Other large investors, including Nordic financial services group Storebrand Asset Management, have \u200bsold their Palantir stakes over the \u200ccompany’s work.<\/p>\n
“Palantir clearly breaches the SNB’s guidelines,” said Guillaume Durin of BreakFree Suisse. “The \u200bSNB investment gives a halo of respectability to companies like Palantir.”<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.7867 Swiss \u200bfrancs)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by John Revill. Editing by Mark Potter)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By John Revill BERN, April 24 (Reuters) – The Swiss National Bank should sell its $1.1 billion stake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[30799,30798,14614,41,470,1364,17,11303,30800],"class_list":{"0":"post-54838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-minneapolis","9":"tag-palantir-technologies","10":"tag-snb","11":"tag-swiss","12":"tag-swiss-franc","13":"tag-swiss-national-bank","14":"tag-switzerland","15":"tag-u-s-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","16":"tag-u-s-securities-and-exchange-commission"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116458657272242920","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}