MIT DEDP MicroMasters online learner's blog post about cover-up linked to resignation of Swiss financial regulator

Fri, 30 Jan 2026
Conflict of Interest disclaimer: the author has resided in Switzerland, he has taken the Swiss citizenship oath and, from time to time, been party to legal and contractual relationships involving parties referenced in the JuristGate reports. The nature of these relationships is often declared within the research reports although we can't rule out the possibility some relationships or influences have not been explicitly itemized within every report.

MIT's DEDP MicroMasters is about Data, Economics and Development Policy. It was recently renamed, Data Economics & Design of Policy although the focus remains on developing countries, not rich countries like Switzerland. From time to time, I've seen people asking what a MicroMasters certificate is really worth. Ironically, that would be a great question for an MIT economist to answer.

In one of the modules, 14.750x Political Economy, Prof Ben Olken begins by asking the online learners to read papers Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War and Do leaders matter? National leadership and growth since world war II. The above average rate of assassinations for people with this job category is used to give us insights. There is nothing in the paper about leaders kidnapped by President Trump. Trump himself was nearly assassinated before his own return to office. The paper is available online.

Benjamin Jones, Benjamin Olken, Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War

 

In earlier blogs, we were able to prove the anonymous document on the FINMA web site relates to Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners, Switzerland's "Law Firm X". From there, we were able to prove that FINMA, the regulatory authority knew about it for some years and the Geneva bar association also seemed to know for a long time.

In the world of abuse, it seems that priests knew some of their colleagues were paedophiles but they have a code of conduct, the Crimen Sollicitationis which prevented priests from warning the public about their own colleagues. The Swiss jurists from the bar association and officials from FINMA appeared to be operating from the same playbook. Those who knew about the scandal didn't tell the clients. They put the reputation of their profession and the privacy of rogue colleagues ahead of the interests of public safety and justice.

We then went the next step, showing that FINMA participated in a cover-up. Reports on this web site meticulously reverse-engineering their cover-up tactics.

From the moment the illegal legal insurance launched in 2018, Birgit Rutishauser had been head of FINMA's surveillance of the insurance industry.

Rutishauser is a graduate of ETH Zurich. Many of the attacks on my family revolve around the death of Adrian von Bidder-Senn on our wedding day. He was also an ETH Zurich graduate like Rutishauser. Just as the priests and the jurists have sought to maintain strict silence about the wrongdoing of colleagues, it seems the ETH Zurich alumni are maintaining silence. After all, Adrian von Bidder-Senn's wife obtained a PhD in cybersecurity from the same institution but looking at the last email she sent to the Debianists, we can see that Dr Diana von Bidder-Senn failed to realize the extent to which her husband was a victim of social engineering. Dr von Bidder-Senn is now the mayor of Basel.

When Rutishauser was appointed in 2018, FINMA published the following comments about her background:

The 46-year-old mathematician and actuary has managed the Risk Management section of the Insurance division since June 2016. Prior to joining FINMA, Birgit Rutishauser spent many years working in a variety of management roles within the insurance sector, most recently as Chief Underwriting & Risk Management Officer at Nationale Suisse and, as such, a member of the Group Executive Management Board. Birgit Rutishauser is a Swiss citizen.

Rutishauser had also worked for Zurich insurance, the same company where Urban Angehrn had worked prior to joining FINMA.

By comparison, I am a holder of the MIT MicroMasters diploma in Data, Economics & Development Policy (DEDP). Well, I also worked for a few banks too. UBS in Zurich provided a reference letter:

Daniel Pocock, UBS, Zurich, cybersecurity

 

Competitors and cyberbullies have spent an enormous amount of effort trying to trick people to believe that I'm a mentally ill person who only pretends to be a developer:

Subject: Re: Open Letter to Debian election candidates about Debian vendettas
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2022 21:00:02 +0900
From: Hideki Yamane <henrich@iijmio-mail.jp>
To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>
CC: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

Hi,

 [ ... snip gaslighting ... ]

 Before talking, you should get counseling for a while since it seems that
 you have some cognitive troubles now. You'd be better to hear about your
 opinion and current your mind status from professional 3rd parties, not Debian.
 (If they say you're very healthy and good, then that's good. Don't you think so?)

 Without that, we cannot make a constructive conversation.
  As I said in my platform, "Be calm, stay cool, stay safe" - Hope you stay "cool"
 a bit with help from professionals, and you would to be able to a "contributor"
 to floss again.


 Life is short - to waste our time for fighting. Let's make more values for users.


-- 
Hideki Yamane <henrich@iijmio-mail.jp>

The rumours about mental illness were obviously falsified. Nonetheless, it is important to remember they started falsifying these things at a time when I lost two family members. Is it an example of cybertorture or is it simply an example of how rude these people are after spending too much time in social control media?

Is it possible that a mentally ill fake developer with a MicroMasters was able to write a blog post that brought down the Deputy CEO of the Swiss financial market regulator?

Rather than finding me to be insane, Switzerland granted me citizenship in the Canton of Vaud in November 2023:

Daniel Pocock, Switzerland

 

Early 2024, I came across a photo of Switzerland's attorney general visiting his peers at the Parquet National Financier in Paris, France to talk about cross-border crime. The illegal legal insurance was an example of cross-border crime because they recruited people from France to work for them and they promoted the insurance to French residents.

The meeting and photo has since been removed from the PNF web site but it can be found in the Wayback Machine.

Rencontre avec M. Stefan Blättler, procureur général de la Confédération helvétique

Le 13 février, les quatre chefs de juridiction du tribunal judiciaire de Paris ont reçu M. Stefan Blättler, procureur général de la Confédération helvétique.

Ces échanges stratégiques ont permis d’aborder les questions d’entraide pénale internationale et de lutte contre la criminalité organisée, le terrorisme, les crimes contre l'humanité et la délinquance financière.

Ils ont été l’occasion de rappeler la détermination commune des autorités judiciaires françaises et helvétiques à lutter contre les formes complexes de criminalité et de réaffirmer le caractère essentiel d'un dialogue soutenu et cordial entre pays voisins, partageant une frontière et une relation longue.

Stefan Blättler, procureur général de la Confédération helvétique, PNF, Paris

 

I wrote to the PNF and sent them some of the documents. This was their reply:

PNF, Parreaux, Thiebaud & Partners, Matthieu Parreaux

 

The PNF, like me, suspects that a crime was committed under French law but for technical reasons, they require a French citizen to bring a formal complaint to a local prosecutor first. The law in France would see me as a witness to the crime.

Later in 2024, I acquired the domain name www.michaelmcgrath.ie, that is the former domain name of Michael McGrath, the EU Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection.

I used the EU Justice Commissioner's former domain name to publish information about the cross-border crime from the Swiss jurists.

Michael McGrath

 

The blogs published between January and March 2025 continue to build the case that FINMA not only knew about the illegal legal insurance but they also had a role in the cover-up.

The blog published on 8 March 2025, International Women's Day, considered the case of a French woman who was tricked to quit the job she had for seven years and come to work for the Swiss jurists in Geneva selling illegal legal insurance.

On 27 March 2025, I was discussing the case with an expert in Paris at the same time the BBC was interviewing former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby about the cover-up of their jurist John Smyth QC. In the meeting in Paris, I was asked if there was a link between the paedophiles and the jurists. The BBC's report only appeared after the meeting and it prompted me to write a new blog post about the culture of cover-ups.

When famed whistleblower Trevor Kitchen exposed the Forex scandal, he didn't go as far as comparing anybody to a paedophile, nonetheless, they had him arrested in Portugal and tried to have him extradited back to Switzerland for criminal speech.

Finance chief who exposed currency scandal fights Swiss extradition bid for criminal defamation

...

Mr Kitchen, who worked as a financial controller for companies including Shell, Castrol and Black and Decker, lost his 700,000 franc pension due to the rigged currency fluctuations.

...

“Because I had specialised in finance all my life understanding policies and procedures in companies, I went and reported this to all the regulators,” he said.

Toby Cadman, head and co-founder of Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers, who is working pro bono for Mr Kitchen, said: “If he was in the UK, this would not even get past the issuing of a warrant, let alone the extradition process.

...

He was arrested by Portuguese police on January 19 and taken for questioning. “It was all maximum security stuff. Six policemen were around me and took me into a small room and told me to take all my clothes off. They threw me in prison for 48 hours all because of the words I used,” he said.

The Swiss embassy has been contacted for comment.

Yet Swiss authorities have made no such move against me. Without admitting or denying any of the allegations on this web site, Birgit Rutishauser's resignation was announced on 1 April 2025, barely two days after the strongest blog post about the complicity of the authorities in the cover-up.

First of all, FINMA published a notice about Rutishauser's resignation.

The same day, FINMA published a longer notice about their restructuring. The notice included a paragraph emphasizing that Birgit Rutishauser's departure was not part of the restructuring. In other words, there is some other specific reason she has chosen to tender her resignation and they are not going to give us any more detail about it.

FINMA adapts its organisation to meet future challenges

...

Independently of the introduction of the new organisational structure, Birgit Rutishauser, member of the Executive Board, Deputy CEO and Head of the Insurance division, has decided to leave FINMA. Vera Carspecken will assume the leadership of the Insurance division on an interim basis from 1 May 2025 (see separate press release of 1 April 2025).

Somebody with so many years of service would normally be entitled to three months of notice period. The abrupt departure of Martin Senn from Zurich insurance was referred to as a factor in his suicide. However, it is also possible that Rutishauser was placed on an extended period of garden leave to prevent her from immediately being able to use confidential information she has acquired in the course of her duties.

Rutishauser's LinkedIn profile tells us she is now at StenFo, that is the fund for a Swiss nuclear dump.

All the waste from five decades of Swiss nuclear programs is currently stored in a temporary facility at Zwilag. If they ever try to build a permanent underground storage facility there will be a referendum to stop it. It just sits in the temporary facility for the time being:

Zwilag, Stenfo, Birgit Rutishauser

 

Birgit Rutishauser

 

President Putin frequently reminds the world about nuclear punishments. What we see here is the power of nuclear teamwork.

Fifty percent of Swiss nuclear fuel comes from Russia, twenty five percent from Canada and twenty five percent was mined in Australia, where I was born.

After leaving her post as second in command at FINMA, head of the insurance division, Rutishauser enrolled at IMD, a well known Swiss business school, where she was awarded a certificate in blockchain.

Birgit Rutishauser, IMD, Blockchain

 

While there are some companies doing completely legitimate projects with blockchain, it is ironic that the scammers who had been allowed to operate for years under FINMA have also pursued a new career path promoting cryptocurrency "investment" to victims in France.

I started the Software Freedom Institute in May 2021 in the middle of the pandemic. Many people were not working at all. I could have chosen not to work and claimed furlough payments from the government. Instead, by working, I was paying tax and contributing money to the social security system to support the rest of society.

I purchased and paid for various insurance services to protect the business. Invoices for Parreaux, Thiebaud & Partners legal services. When IBM Red Hat attacked my business, the Swiss legal protection did nothing to help. The ADR Forum legal panel eventually gave a ruling against IBM Red Hat, declaring that I was a victim of harassment from a much larger company/competitor.

Likewise, after the conviction of Cardinal George Pell, rogue Debianists attacked my family with rumours about abuse and they attacked us again after I founded the Software Freedom Institute. The Swiss jurists did nothing to help. I went to Italy by myself to speak to the Carabinieri and after years of inquiries, the Cardinal died four hours after I filed a report about exploitation. Despite Switzerland's reputation for privacy, the Swiss jurists provided no help whatsoever to protect my family and I from these intrusions.

Justin Welby had to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury due to his failure to take action against the paedophile jurist John Smyth QC. On 30 March 2025, we published the comparison of Church of England, Crimen Sollicitationis and the cover-up at FINMA and barely two days later, Rutishauser's resignation was announced.

As it is Switzerland, nobody is holding their breath waiting for authorities to confirm the Deputy CEO of FINMA resigned because of the cover-up disclosed in the JuristGate reports. However, we can now try to answer the question we started with, what is the real value of the DEDP MicroMasters from MIT? Priceless.

Daniel Pocock, MIT, DEDP, MicroMasters

 

Read more of the JuristGate reports.

Conflict of Interest disclaimer: the author has resided in Switzerland, he has taken the Swiss citizenship oath and, from time to time, been party to legal and contractual relationships involving parties referenced in the JuristGate reports. The nature of these relationships is often declared within the research reports although we can't rule out the possibility some relationships or influences have not been explicitly itemized within every report.