Edwin Bollier and his partner, Erwin Meister, founded Mebo Telecommunications AG in Zürich, Switzerland in 1969.
After transmissions ceased in 1974, and a lengthy legal battle with the Dutch government over its impounding of the vessel, in 1977 the Mebo II sailed for Tripoli, Libya, where it was initially leased to the Libyan government for use as a radio station; then later sunk during military target practice in the Gulf of Sidra.
When the defense protested that they had not been given notice of that position, prosecuting counsel, Alan Turnbull QC, told the court: As a discouragement to the prosecution, Bollier is alleged to have let it be known before the start of the trial that if he were to be charged for the PA 103 bombing he would call some high-ranking and controversial witnesses to appear, for example: former United States President George H. W. Bush, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and Gerrit Pretorius, private secretary to South Africa's former foreign minister Pik Botha.
[6] In October 2007 Bollier told UN-observer Dr Hans Köchler that he had been offered, but not accepted, a payment of $4 million, together with a new identity, if he agreed to confirm that the fragment of a timer allegedly found at the Pan Am Flight 103 crash site was actually part of a Mebo MST-13 timer that his firm had supplied to Libya.
[7] In a subsequent BBC documentary aired in 2008[8] Bollier claimed that he had been offered $200 million by the Gaddafi government if he could "... get Al Megrahi out of prison".