Credit Suisse faces charges of money laundering

Credit Suisse faces charges of money laundering

(Bloomberg) Credit Suisse is again suspected of money laundering. Geneva’s top financial crime prosecutor, Yves Bertossa, has identified more than $60 million that he says was laundered through Credit Suisse. It could be the prelude to the second charge against a large Swiss bank.

At a hearing last week, Bertossa presented the case. He identified eight transactions that the bank allegedly allowed to go through between 2008 and 2014, including transfers to a third-party account. Bertossa sees the cases as serious money laundering, as the Bloomberg news agency learned from investigative circles.

A spokesman for the press office of the Geneva public prosecutor’s office declined to comment and referred to ongoing investigations.

The focus of the proceedings is the former customer advisor Patrice Lescaudron, who had already been sentenced to prison in 2018 for fraud and forgery. He had issued fake bank statements to his biggest client, the Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili. Apparently he wanted to cover increasing losses in the portfolios of other customers.

Credit Suisse has repeatedly stated that Lescaudron was a lone wolf who kept his machinations a secret from his colleagues and superiors. All investigations into this matter conducted by the bank, Finma and the criminal authorities since 2015 have shown that the client advisor Lescaudron was not supported in his criminal activities by any other Credit Suisse employee, the bank said in a statement this week. In the completed criminal proceedings, Lescaudron was also not convicted of money laundering.

The lack of supervision of Lescaudron and the bank’s organizational shortcomings made money laundering possible in the first place, Bertossa said at the June 8 hearing, according to Bloomberg sources. An indictment could be months away as appeals have been filed against the admissibility of evidence, which is currently dealing with Swiss courts.

Under Swiss law, a bank that does not have the necessary supervision or organization to prevent money laundering can itself be charged with money laundering. All transactions cited by Bertossa were transferred to a third-party account, which concealed the illegal origin of the funds.

A court in Bermuda ruled in March in a case involving a Credit Suisse insurance company that managed Ivanishvili’s money that the bank “looked the other way” on Lescaudron’s activities. The court estimated billionaire Ivanishvili’s losses at around $550 million and awarded him appropriate compensation. Credit Suisse intends to appeal the verdict.

Credit Suisse has never been directly accused in connection with this case. Should the bank now be charged, this would only be the second time that a large credit institution has had to face criminal proceedings in Switzerland. The first charge was also directed against Credit Suisse.

The major Swiss bank had already been accused in 2020 because it had failed to prevent the money laundering of a Bulgarian wrestler and later cocaine dealer. A verdict in this matter is still pending, and Credit Suisse has said it rejects all allegations in “this old matter”.