‘Dictators and criminals could deposit billions at Swiss bank Credit Suisse’

Countless criminals, dictators and sanctioned parties were able to deposit their money unhindered at the Swiss bank Credit Suisse. That is the outcome of Sunday published research by the international Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) under the heading ‘Swiss Secrets’. The journalists found a total of more than 8 billion dollars (more than 7 billion euros) in bank accounts of controversial politicians and criminals.

The OCCRP team managed to obtain documents from more than 18,000 Credit Suisse accounts. Dozens of names of people with questionable backgrounds emerged from this. For example, the family of the controversial Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had an account that was used to buy real estate near Lake Geneva and in Moscow, and the Guta family accused of fraud in Ukraine stole more than 100 million dollars from the Credit Suisse. -account in screen companies. Serbian drug smuggler Rodoljub Radulović is said to have used his bank account to launder about 3.3 million euros.

Financial experts who reviewed their findings on behalf of OCCRP journalists argued that in many of the cases presented, Credit Suisse should never have opened a bank account. This is because the origin of the deposited money was doubtful. According to current and former employees of the bank, this was possible because of a work culture that prioritized taking risk for profit. Bankers could get an individual bonus if they brought in wealthy customers. In addition, executives would impose less strict requirements on internal controls when it came to accounts with extremely high amounts.

Risk management

In a response, Credit Suisse told the researchers that risk management is “at the core of our business”. The bank declined to comment on individual customer names, but stated that most of the bank accounts cited by the researchers have since been closed, or that the bank already intended to close them before the journalists’ questions came in.

Swiss banking secrecy is said to be one of the reasons why it is difficult for bank employees and journalists to report abuses within Swiss banks. A Swiss media group is said to have declined to participate in the Credit Suisse investigation because it feared possible legal consequences.

Credit Suisse is Switzerland’s second largest bank. In The bank was also under fire in 2014 because it became known that 22,000 American account holders managed to evade the tax authorities. The CEO of Credit Suisse admitted that the bank had offered help.

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