Even though most of the accounts outed by the leak were already closed, the last thing Credit Suisse wanted to see was names of their clients in news stories. The scandalized bank is scrambling to control the damage but the named clients are really furious.
Swiss bank leak
The country of Switzerland has always been famous for four things. Cuckoo clocks, hot chocolate, cheese and anonymous numbered bank accounts sheltered from the prying eyes of investigators around the world. Those days are over. The clocks are all digital and made in Taiwan, while chocolate has become endangered. The cheese is still around but the bank secrecy traditions have just as many holes in them.
Thanks to a leak of “more than 18,000” accounts to the media, the whole world now knows Credit Suisse clients included “criminals, alleged human rights abusers and sanctioned individuals including dictators.” Everyone already knew that, now we know which ones in particular.
On Sunday, February 20, several newspapers printed details revealed by the leak. The whistle blowing rat divulged information “which covered accounts holding more than $100 billion.” German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung had first dibs on the data.
“The newspaper then involved an anti-corruption group and 46 other media outlets around the world, including The New York Times, Guardian, Le Monde and others.”
The media is frantically listing shady account holders “of the second-biggest Swiss bank.” Pundits note the names include “an international cast of unsavory characters.”
The leak revealed things like “a Yemeni spy chief implicated in torture” kept his cash with them. So did “Venezuelan officials involved in a corruption scandal, and the sons of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.”
Business as usual
The first thing Swiss Bankers say to deflect damage from the leak is that the accounts in question “had been opened from the 1940s into the 2010s.” The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has a thing or two to say about that.
According to Paul Radu, co-founder of the OCCRP, “I’ve too often seen criminals and corrupt politicians who can afford to keep on doing business as usual, no matter what the circumstances, because they have the certainty that their ill-gotten gains will be kept safe.” That’s the whole idea behind secret numbered bank accounts in the first place.
Their investigation into similar matters, Radu explains, “exposes how these people can bypass regulation despite their crimes, to the detriment of democracies and people all over the world.”
Swiss banking laws have always made it a crime for banks to knowingly “accept money linked to criminal activity.” However, since everything was always so carefully kept secret, nobody noticed any shady dealings going on under their nose. The leak is causing major nightmares in the Swiss banking industry.
Credit Suisse rushed out a 400 word statement to put out the fire. The bank “strongly rejects” the accusations. “The matters presented are predominantly historical, in some cases dating back as far as the 1940s, and the accounts of these matters are based on partial, inaccurate, or selective information taken out of context, resulting in tendentious interpretations of the bank’s business conduct.”
The leak really threw them. Reports note, for “much of the past decade, the Zurich-based financial giant has moved from one crisis to another as it came to terms with its role in helping clients launder ill-gotten funds, shelter assets from taxation and aid in corruption.“
