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The major Swiss bank has lost a court case in Bermuda, it reports. She is expected to pay more than half a billion dollars in fines.
What is the case? It’s about a corrupt employee of Credit Suisse who harmed customers. The big bank neglected supervision in this case. It’s a known case. A Frenchman, Patrice Lescaudron, who worked for CS in Geneva from 2004 to 2015, managed assets of up to one and a half billion dollars for the bank’s customers at the time. The clerk lost a lot of customer money with risky speculations. Internal guidelines were disregarded and the man also pocketed several millions. He was convicted in Geneva and later committed suicide in prison.
What does this have to do with Bermuda? Patrice Lescaudron mainly managed money from oligarchs, from wealthy customers from the East. Some of these assets were also hidden in offshore centers, including at an insurance subsidiary of CS in the Bermuda Islands. One of the injured customers had complained there, a billionaire from Georgia. The CS branch in Bermuda is responsible for a loss of 400 million dollars.
What verdict did the court make? Three months ago there was a court case with claims for damages. CS sent out a media release on Thursday night – a very short one, without specifying the content in more detail. In it, the bank only writes that a court in Bermuda will shortly publish a negative judgment against the local insurance subsidiary, which will possibly amount to more than 500 million dollars, it says literally. An exact total is not yet available.