Over 160 reporters from 48 outlets spent months poring through the data - and found that dozens of the accounts belonged to corrupt politicians, criminals, spies, dictators, and other dubious characters. The records are nowhere near a complete list of the bank’s clients, but they provide a revealing glimpse behind the curtain of Swiss banking secrecy. Journalists have obtained leaked records identifying more than 18,000 accounts belonging to foreign customers who stashed their money at Credit Suisse. With nearly 50,000 employees and 1.5 trillion Swiss francs in assets under management for 1.5 million clients, this banking behemoth is still just the second-largest bank in Switzerland, a testament to how central the banking sector is to this wealthy and comfortable nation.īut, as a new global investigation spearheaded by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and OCCRP reveals, this glittering success has its murky side. And at the heart of that sector is Credit Suisse, which over its 166-year history has become one of the world’s most important financial institutions.
But there is one thing that unites them: Where they kept their money.Īfter its luxury watches, snow-capped mountains, and superior chocolates, the Alpine nation of Switzerland is perhaps known best for its secretive banking sector. They come from all over the world, each associated with a different corrupt, authoritarian regime and each enriching themselves in their own way. Bureaucrats accused of looting Venezuela’s oil wealth and hastening its descent into humanitarian crisis. The sons of an Azerbaijani strongman who rules a mountainous territory as his own private fiefdom. A Swiss media group was unable to participate in the Suisse Secrets investigation due to the risk of criminal prosecution.Ī Yemeni spy chief implicated in torture.
Journalists and experts say Switzerland’s draconian banking secrecy laws effectively silence insiders or journalists who may want to expose wrongdoing within a Swiss bank.Asked why so many of these accounts existed, current and former employees described a work culture that incentivized taking on risk to maximize profits.Compliance experts who reviewed journalists’ findings said many of these customers should not have been allowed to bank at Credit Suisse at all.Accounts identified by journalists as potentially problematic held over $8 billion in assets.
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