A massive leak from the huge global private bank Credit Suisse has revealed the hidden wealth of clients involved in serious crimes, including torture, money laundering, drug trafficking, and corruption.
Details of bank accounts linked to 30,000 clients around the world were leaked, exposing the beneficiaries of more than 100 billion Swiss France ($109 billion) held in one of the best-known financial institutions in Switzerland.
The accounts showcase widespread failures of due diligence by Credit Suisse despite repeatedly pledging for decades to remove illicit funds and dubious clients from their accounts. Credit Suisse repeatedly either opened up or maintained bank accounts for a sweeping list of high-risk clients.
An anonymous whistleblower leaked the data first to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, saying they believe the Swiss banking secrecy laws are immoral.
Clients include a human trafficker in the Philippines, a stock exchange boss in Hong Kong jailed for bribery, a billionaire who ordered his Lebanese pop star girlfriend be murdered, executives who looted Venezuela’s state oil company, and a laundry list of corrupt politicians including from Ukraine to Egypt.
An account owned in the Vatican was used to spend close to $400 million in an allegedly fraudulent investment in a London property that has become the center of an ongoing criminal trial of multiple defendants, including a cardinal.
In a statement, Credit Suisse rejected the allegations and inferences over the bank’s purported business practices, saying that the matters being uncovered by reporters are based on “selective information taken out of context.”
Dubbed the Suisse Secrets projects, the international investigation into one of the world’s most important and wealthiest banks was conducted by more than 163 journalists from 48 media outlets in 39 countries. The journalists spent months analyzing the account information.
The leaks could have massive repercussions. They could threaten a full crisis for Switzerland as a whole, which retains one of the most secretive banking laws in the world. Swiss banks manage about $8.6 trillion in assets, and about half of those belong to clients abroad.
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