After years of preparation, the criminal court case against former directors of the Cantonal Bank of Geneva (BCGE), implicated in past massive losses at the financial institution, is teetering on the edge of collapse.

The case was interrupted this week when Jacques Delieutraz, the presiding correctional court judge,  was removed from the proceedings by a justice court, following objections made by defence lawyers dating back to last May over the jury selection process.

Three former directors of BCGE, including former chairman Dominique Ducret, and two employees of accounting company Ernst & Young, which audited the bank, stand accused of fraud and abuse of trust between 1996 and 1998.

The state-owned bank suffered a loss of 2.4 billion francs at the expense of taxpayers as a result of the alleged wrongdoing.

In a demand filed in February 2002, the Geneva cantonal government filed for damages - with interest - from the federal banking commission (now FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority), which it accused of negligence in not properly supervising the bank.

The BCGE had to be recapitalized by the government to stave off bankruptcy.

So the case against the five people implicated has been highly anticipated.

Now, justice officials are scrambling to find a new judge to get the case back on the rails.

The cantonal cabinet issued a statement this week deploring the interruption of the case.

Since 2000, the investigating magistrate in the affair has held 280 hearings, heard from 118 witnesses, and amassed 1,500 files of evidence, the government noted.

After numerous procedural delays and appeals heard by cantonal and federal authorities, the case finally got under way on October 4 and was to have finished on November 26 with a judgment.

The cantonal cabinet has urged judicial authorities to find a new judge to get the case back on track.

Geneva media have responded critically to the latest developments.

“The BCGE case touches bottom,” the Tribune de Genève newspaper summarized in a headline.

“Four weeks for nothing, and a total of hundreds of thousands of francs, or even more,which will be added to the cost of this debacle,” wrote Pierre Ruetschi, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, in a scathing editorial about the case.

“It’s total chaos.”

Le Courrier newspaper said the state as a whole stands to be discredited by the case.

Geneva’s cantonal bank was one of several in Switzerland that suffered significant losses stemming from real estate problems in the 1990s.

A bubble developed in property prices followed by a collapse when interest rates rose, leaving many financial institutions with bad loans given the lack of lending requirements at the time.

Those requirements have since been tightened, although the Swiss National Bank has repeatedly raised concerns this year about some Swiss banks not using enough caution in real estate.