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The Almighty Buck Crime

Whistleblower Leaks Secret Details on 30,000 Credit Suisse Accounts Worth $108 Billion (theguardian.com) 85

Posted by EditorDavid from the dark-money dept.
A "massive leak" by a whistleblower revealed the secret details of bank accounts linked to more than 30,000 Credit Suisse clients around the world, reports the Guardian.

They note that Credit Suisse is one of the world's largest private banks, as well as Switzerland's second-biggest lender, with 50,000 employees — and yet the leaked information "points to widespread failures of due diligence by Credit Suisse, despite repeated pledges over decades to weed out dubious clients and illicit funds," including "clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes."

The accounts are worth more than $108 billion USD (that's 100 billion Swiss Francs or £80 billion)... The Guardian is part of a consortium of media outlets given exclusive access to the data. We can reveal how Credit Suisse repeatedly either opened or maintained bank accounts for a panoramic array of high-risk clients across the world. They include a human trafficker in the Philippines, a Hong Kong stock exchange boss jailed for bribery, a billionaire who ordered the murder of his Lebanese pop star girlfriend and executives who looted Venezuela's state oil company, as well as corrupt politicians from Egypt to Ukraine.

One Vatican-owned account in the data was used to spend €350m (£290m) in an allegedly fraudulent investment in London property that is at the centre of an ongoing criminal trial of several defendants, including a cardinal....

This month, Credit Suisse became the first major Swiss bank in the country's history to face criminal charges — which it denies — relating to allegation it helped launder money from the cocaine trade on behalf of the Bulgarian mafia. However, the repercussions of the leak could be much broader than one bank, threatening a crisis for Switzerland, which retains one of the world's most secretive banking laws... Over the past three decades, Credit Suisse has faced at least a dozen penalties and sanctions for offences involving tax evasion, money laundering, the deliberate violation of US sanctions and frauds carried out against its own customers that span multiple decades and jurisdictions. In total, it has racked up more than $4.2bn in fines or settlements. That includes the $2.6bn the Swiss bank agreed to pay US authorities after pleading guilty to conspiring to aid tax evasion in 2014; the $536m it was fined by the US five years before for deliberately circumventing US sanctions against countries including Iran and Sudan in 2009, and other payouts to Germany and Italy over tax evasion allegations.

Jeff Neiman, a Florida-based attorney who represents a number of Credit Suisse whistleblowers, believes the sheer number of scandals involving the bank indicates a deeper problem. "The bank likes to say it's just rogue bankers. But how many rogue bankers do you need to have before you start having a rogue bank?" he said. Neiman alleges there has been a culture at the bank "which encourages its bankers probably from the top down to hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, bury their heads in the sand on a good day, and on many days, actively assist folks to skirt whatever the law may be in order to best protect assets under management...."

The debate over whether Switzerland's banking industry has undergone sufficient reforms is likely to be renewed in light of the leak.
"Nearly 50 media organisations have spent months poring over the data," reports the BBC: But the Swiss bank rejected the allegations in a statement on Sunday, saying it strongly rejected the allegations and insinuations about the bank's alleged business practices or lack of due diligence carried out. "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", it said.... "Approximately 90% of the reviewed accounts are today closed or were in the process of closure prior to receipt of the press inquiries, of which over 60% were closed before 2015," it said, although it would not comment on specific clients mentioned....

In a statement published by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the anonymous source explained their motivation for leaking the records more than a year ago. "I believe that Swiss banking secrecy laws are immoral. The pretext of protecting financial privacy is merely a fig leaf covering the shameful role of Swiss banks as collaborators of tax evaders," they wrote....

It follows other scandals for the Swiss bank, including the departure of two of its top executives after allegedly breaking Covid regulations and spying on former staff.
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Whistleblower Leaks Secret Details on 30,000 Credit Suisse Accounts Worth $108 Billion More

Whistleblower Leaks Secret Details on 30,000 Credit Suisse Accounts Worth $108 Billion

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  • of course they closed accounts (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kiviQr ( 3443687 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @01:18AM (#62287415)
    ... then moved to the next teller and opened a new one.

  • The Guardian (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @01:21AM (#62287417) Homepage
    Independent journal of renown. You won't see this in the WSJ.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      CNN: "Stop Doing Your Own Research"

      • Are you wilfully stupid? Or did it come naturally?

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )
          I think it's more "intentional" than "willful". That comment is 100% taken out of context and being used to try and discredit CNN. I'm not saying CNN has a lot of credibility to begin with, but what NFN is doing is disingenuous as best.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      "Don’t Go Down the Rabbit Hole"
      "Critical thinking, as we’re taught to do it, isn’t helping in the fight against misinformation."

      https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0... [nytimes.com]

      • It would be very hard to demonstrate that their assertion is incorrect, no matter how uncomfortable I am with it.

    • This seems to be part of the "Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project" https://www.occrp.org/en/ [occrp.org] Their Suisse secrets page: https://www.occrp.org/en/suiss... [occrp.org] A list of all journalist, their affiliation and the media companies involved in this particular investigation at the bottom of the page (in the US it's the Miami Herald and NYT).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by storkus ( 179708 )

      Independent journal of renown. You won't see this in the WSJ.

      https://www.investopedia.com/a... [investopedia.com]

      The Murdochs own it, and I'm guessing their name is likely in those CS documents, so...

  • Swiss news: "Data leak at Credit Suisse!" Foreign news: "Credit Suisse whistle blower uncovers dirty business!" It will be interesting to see how the stock market will react. Not at all, cold/dropping, or lukewarm/dropping a bit then coming back up within a week. Other than that, this is probably business as usual. Note: I have no private account nor shares of Credit Suisse.

    • Re:media bias (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @02:37AM (#62287537)

      Credit Suisse has had a rough time lately. If you remember last year there was news about a billionaire stock trader losing a bunch of money over-leveraging and then getting a margin call, and the banks who loaned him money ended losing a lot of money... Credit Suisse was one of the worst affected. Their lack of diligence bit them in the ass. Their stock dropped like a rock.

      At the start of 2018 it was $18 a share. By the start of the pandemic it was at $14. During the crash it dropped to around $8. Then with the market recovery it got back up around $14, only to drop on their own bungling, not even a scandal, and the damage was so bad that they've wandered all the way down to their current price of $8.93. They're in a very weak position financially because of last year's losses. Their "enterprise value" is -$20b, compared to an industry ("fiancial markets") average of (positive) $114.98b. Their income last year was under $3000 per employee, compared to industry average $454,000. Long term debt/equity 399.89% compared to industry average 65%. Their current ratio is below 1, probably, but their financial statements failed to disclose all the information. That means they can't even pay their bills without taking on more debt this year.

      Don't be surprised if they get bought out by UBS after this news tanks their stock further, and raises their cost of credit. A bank that has trouble borrowing money? That's Credit Suisse.

      (I have no holdings or positions on CS)

      • At some point in time around that billion loss of that rogue trader I did briefly own stock, but as I'm not a happy customer, (have no regular account there, just 1 month rent blocked - Swiss thing, and company share program is there, outrageous fees) I decided to invest elsewhere. Didn't sell at a loss, so no hard feelings there.

        Thank you for the analysis, it fills in some of the gaps. I do think it would be a shame if Credit Suisse got bought by UBS. They're even worse in terms of customer pricing. I le

        • I use a high quality local bank, but I also pay my taxes and don't do any money laundering so YMMV.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kubajz ( 964091 )
        The figures you provide are interesting but althoug I have not analysed their financial statements, I believe some of the figures should be taken with a grain of salt:

        "Their "enterprise value" is -$20b, compared to an industry ("fiancial markets") average of (positive) $114.98b." - An average value of one bank? That is quite irrelevant, given the vastly different sizes of banks worldwide.

        "Their income last year was under $3000 per employee, compared to industry average $454,000." - Didn't one of the prev

  • In this world, there are many uncover businessman that they don't want to disclose his black money and earned from illegal sources.

  • A view from Switzerland (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @02:06AM (#62287477) Homepage

    Let me say in advance: Credit Suisse has done some scummy things. With that out of the way, though, I would like to present a different perspective on some of the things in the article. Full disclosure: I am Swiss.

    - - - - -

    First, banking secrecy. How is it, that nearly all Western government have convinced their populaces that banking secrecy is a bad thing? Take the USA as an example: the fourth amendment states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause..."

    So, the government cannot just come in and search your stuff. But somehow the government is allowed to know everything about your finances, with no warrant and no probable cause? That's some great koolaid.

    The EU is no better: they have started to put some great privacy laws into place (like the GDPR), but somehow privacy does not apply to people's financial lives. How can that be justified?

    In Switzerland, if the government thinks we're cheating on taxes, or laundering money, or whatever, they have to get a warrant. That's how it should be.

    - - - - -

    Second, look at some of the examples in the article. The head of the Hong Kong stock market, Ronald Li Fook-shiu, was indicted, convicted and served his sentence. A decade later, he opened a bank account - so what? Are people trying to say that convicted criminals are never allowed to have another bank account? Seriously?

    - - - - -

    Finally, a lot of importance is placed on this being a "Swiss" bank. However, lots of banks are international. If you go downtown in your nearest big city, you will find local banks, British banks, American banks, Swiss banks, German banks, and probably others as well.

    There is a lot of anti-Swiss sentiment in play here, because of WWII accusations around Jewish people hiding their assets from the German government. This is just weird. The Swiss banks maintained those accounts indefinitely, and they could be claimed at any time. Lots of Jewish people also hid their money in the USA - but guess what: In the USA, state governments seize the money after only a few years ("escheatment"), and in most states the money is irrevocably gone a few years later.

    - - - - -

    tl;dr: The article uses old data to rehash scummy things that Credit Suisse did years ago. However, a lot of the things are not scummy at all: people should have financial privacy, unless the government gets a warrant, and people with criminal backgrounds still need bank accounts. The article also relies on anti-Swiss sentiment, based on old and inaccurate tropes from WWII.

    • "If you go downtown in your nearest big city, you will find local banks, British banks, American banks, Swiss banks, German banks, and probably others as well."

      In Romania (at least), we have a couple (I think) of Romanian banks owned by Romanians. We also have the Romanian bank of "Groupe Societe Generale", which is a Romanian bank owned by (I assume) French. We also have a small bank (Intesa San Paolo I think), which is a Romanian bank owned by some Italians (I assume).
      We certainly have Romanian banks owne

      • This makes me uncomfortable (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The Swiss might be different in allowing banks _from other countries_ to operate in Switzerland - by what I know, we only allow companies located legally in Romania to do banking business in Romania.

        Being located legally in Romania and owned by foreigners, possibly another bank, are different things and not mutually exclusive. In Europe because of "single market" you need a banking licence in just one country, enabling you to become active in any European market.

        Here in the Netherlands, when opening a bank account with a Dutch-headquartered and Dutch-owned bank, I was supposed to sign a form stating that I am not an American. Because of FATCA, American law.

        I thought that was because that bank was als

        • That's the stupidest rant I've read in awhile, on the level of "I can't use the intertubes anymore"-guy.

          Signing a piece of paper promising a Nederlander bank that you're not an American is "bending over backwards?" Oh goodness, you poor oppressed thing!

          If only there was a way to protect your country from Germans and Russians without protecting snot-faced morons like you! You're lucky somebody is "bending over" for you, so you can have a country. Oh noes! You had to sign a paper saying what nationality you a

    • Re: A view from Switzerland (Score:5, Interesting)

      by St.Creed ( 853824 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @03:38AM (#62287601)

      Do you even know what the GDPR is? It most certainly applies to banks. In fact, they were among the first organisations to implement it.

      As for the shameful robbery of the Jewish clients by Swiss banks, that's been documented elsewhere:

      "Right up until the end of the war, Switzerland laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen assets, including gold taken from the central banks of German-occupied Europe. At the war's end Switzerland successfully resisted Allied calls to restitute these funds, and in the Washington Agreement of 1946 the Allies contented themselves with acceptance of a mere 12% of the stolen gold. Holocaust survivors and the heirs of those who perished met an implacable wall of bureaucracy and only a handful managed to reclaim their assets. As it turns out, some of the dormant accounts were taken by the Swiss authorities to satisfy claims of Swiss nationals whose property was seized by Communist regimes in East Central Europe."

    • Re: A view from Switzerland (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rantrantrant ( 4753443 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @04:58AM (#62287725)
      Why no banking secrecy? 1: Because it's the easiest way to trace people's financial misdeeds. Think of how many criminals', cartels', & corporations' crimes have been exposed via their banking information. Other countries do it because it's necessary to prevent quite literally evil people from prevailing. 2: Because tax laws are unique. Almost all tax laws work on the premise that you're guilty until you prove yourself innocent. We have to provide sufficient evidence to convince tax authorities that we haven't committed a crime. Since we're all legally obliged to declare our banking information without a warrant. The tax & policing authorities getting it directly from the banks just saves time & resources. It also allows cartels & corporations to be investigated discreetly & with international cooperation. In a better world, yes, we should all have privacy but until that world comes, we need the ability to effectively investigate & prosecute financial misdeeds. If anything, we need to double down on going after offshore banking & tax havens. That means better banking transparency laws. Of course the rich, powerful & corrupt are doing their best to prevent this from happening.

      • Your crime is intellectual lazyness (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Why no banking secrecy? 1: Because it's the easiest way to trace people's financial misdeeds. Think of how many criminals', cartels', & corporations' crimes have been exposed via their banking information. Other countries do it because it's necessary to prevent quite literally evil people from prevailing.

        The consensus in other fields seems to be that it doesn't need to be easy to trace people's misdeeds. For that involves snooping on people, and that should not be easy even if you're legally allowed. It's called privacy.

        So your case why in finance you should be guilty until proven innocent whereas everywhere else you should be innocent until proven guilty is so far unconvincing.

        You instead appeal to emotion. You could just as well have said "think of all the children this would save!" and you would make a

      • Almost all tax laws work on the premise that you're guilty until you prove yourself innocent. We have to provide sufficient evidence to convince tax authorities that we haven't committed a crime.

        Exactly. And...you don't see a problem with that?

        Just think of all the crime we could eliminate, if we removed more privacy. Government access 24/7 to cameras in your house. No warrant needed to track your location, to listen in on your communications. Outlaw encryption.

        I would argue that all of this gives governments too much power, and violates our individual rights. It should be the same for your financial privacy: innocent until proven guilty. If the government has evidence of a crime, they can get

      • All those arguments work for having all your calls / mails / chats recorded or saved by telcos directly to a govt database so that law enforcement & pvt corporates can fish in it 24/7

    • The EU is no better: they have started to put some great privacy laws into place (like the GDPR), but somehow privacy does not apply to people's financial lives. How can that be justified?

      In order to control the populace, it's not necessary to know every little detail about them, that's only useful if you want to sell them something. The CIAs and NSAs of this world still didn't get the memo or are still in denial, but it's really that simple.

      If you want to keep your population under control, you simply need to be able to control their source of income. That's also the primary reason why most governments don't like stuff like cryptocurrencies. Full financial transparency ensures they can alwa

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 )

      The Swiss banks maintained those accounts indefinitely, and they could be claimed at any time.

      Translated: The Swiss banks held on to the money belonging to murdered Jews with the excuse that they were still waiting for them to come back and claim their money. For some reason about six million of them never did. What a pity, the Swiss banks will just have to keep holding onto the funds and art until the people who deposited them return.

      The same banks were much more accommodating with the funds the Nazis stashed there. Two tons of gold fillings and wedding rings? Sure Herr Sturmbannfuehrer, we'll

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bsolar ( 1176767 )

        Translated: The Swiss banks held on to the money belonging to murdered Jews with the excuse that they were still waiting for them to come back and claim their money. For some reason about six million of them never did. What a pity, the Swiss banks will just have to keep holding onto the funds and art until the people who deposited them return.

        The alternative would have been what, to appropriate them after a few years and make all traces disappear? Or to give the assets to whoever comes up with some vague claim of being the rightful owner? This is not to say that they did not deserve to be criticized, but the situation was much more complex than what sensationalist news and interest groups portrayed.

        The same banks were much more accommodating with the funds the Nazis stashed there. Two tons of gold fillings and wedding rings? Sure Herr Sturmbannfuehrer, we'll keep them safe for you, nothing suspicious about that at all!

        The Swiss maintained neutrality, meaning that they kept dealing with everyone, including the Nazi. The alternative would have been to either complete

        • The alternative would have been what, to appropriate them after a few years and make all traces disappear?

          The alternative, as was implemented for art spoliations, is to give the assets to a Restitution Committee, under national or international protection, in charge of identifying victims and authenticating claims of the surviving descendents. For the paintings it has not worked very well (many artworks are still waiting in museums for their owners to be identified), but at least it started from a good idea.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Banking secrecy: It's been known for a very, very long time that banking secrecy mainly helps criminals and tax avoiders. Most people can't easily cheat on their taxes because their employer declares everything to the government and makes the payments.

      So you have a choice, either you can keep your bank balance "secret" (but the government had a good idea of your income anyway, as do credit rating agencies) or you can benefit from reduced tax evasion and making it harder to handle the proceeds of crime. The

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by bsolar ( 1176767 )

        Banking secrecy: It's been known for a very, very long time that banking secrecy mainly helps criminals and tax avoiders. Most people can't easily cheat on their taxes because their employer declares everything to the government and makes the payments.

        Do you have some source for this? I'm always very skeptical of these "helps criminals" arguments since they are routinely used to erode privacy, e.g. see the recent arguments against end-to-end encryption.

        Ronald Li Fook-shiu is a good example. He stole money from people. It looks like they didn't get all of it back, and now he is hiding some of it in a secret account. You can have the freedom to have a secret bank account, or you can have freedom from getting your money stolen and not recovered.

        Accounts are considered private information, but they *cannot* be anonymous and can be subject to searches. The "secrecy" is that they, like any other private property, cannot be subject to *warrantless* searches.

        So the government needs what is basically a search warrant, which can be issued if there is a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Wikipedia has numerous citations for the issues with Swiss banking and tax evasion/criminality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          Despite the cooperation of the Swiss government, Swiss banks continue to be a major offshore tax haven.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bsolar ( 1176767 )

            Wikipedia has numerous citations for the issues with Swiss banking and tax evasion/criminality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

            Despite the cooperation of the Swiss government, Swiss banks continue to be a major offshore tax haven.

            The claim is not that bank secrecy can also be used to commit crime... almost anything can: the claim is that it's "mainly" used for that. I don't see any statement supporting that claim in the link you cited. Even the linked article about bank secrecy [wikipedia.org] in general has a quite lacking paragraph about the link of bank secrecy with financial crime with no links to credible studies or rigorous analysis.

            Note that most Swiss residents likely have a bank account with a Swiss financial institution, meaning that ther

            • With banking transparency, we'd be able to see where the Swiss banks' main revenue streams are coming from, i.e. their share of the profits of tax evation & drug cartels that they're helping to evade prosecution. We may be able to have banking secrecy if we could convince most governments to regulate corporate accountancy better & decriminalise recreational drugs. There's a choice to be made there.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Banking secrecy: It's been known for a very, very long time that banking secrecy mainly helps criminals and tax avoiders. Most people can't easily cheat on their taxes because their employer declares everything to the government and makes the payments.

        I am pretty sure I know exactly what type of data this is. As far as I remember, the Swiss tax authorities are informed about these accounts, just not who owns them. There should be a property tax and a tax on any earnings made with the money in there and I think those are higher than if the people owning the money actually had declared it directly to the tax authorities.

    • Let me say in advance: Credit Suisse has done some scummy things. With that out of the way, though, I would like to present a different perspective on some of the things in the article. Full disclosure: I am Swiss.
      [...]
      First, banking secrecy. How is it, that nearly all Western government have convinced their populaces that banking secrecy is a bad thing?

      Well, a lot of it was how the Swiss profited from banking gold the Nazis stole. Your country's position of today is very much predicated upon the holocaust.

      To be fair, so is America's; we knew it was occurring and didn't bother to get involved until we couldn't pretend there was nothing going on any more. And we had a bunch of war profiteers in this country, so this comment is not about a moral high ground... this is just about Switzerland's conclusive lack thereof.

    • Re:A view from Switzerland (Score:4, Interesting)

      by nzkbuk ( 773506 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @07:29AM (#62287957)

      I know people who work on the regulatory compliance side of some of the well known global banks in either the wealth management or business banking parts of the bank. They have told me on many occasions who the Swiss parts of their banks use "Our laws prevent us from sharing information like source of wealth etc from you, but trust us, this money is fine, now go and open an account in your jurisdiction so our client can move money through your country"

      First, banking secrecy. How is it, that nearly all Western government have convinced their populaces that banking secrecy is a bad thing?

      Well that really depends on just how private those matters are. Perhaps if plausible deniability for bankers and their management wasn't a thing then we would see more bankers serving time for accessory to and a bunch of the sort of thing the article exposes wouldn't be such an issue, but right now it is and these banks & bankers are facilitating crime

      But somehow the government is allowed to know everything about your finances, with no warrant and no probable cause?

      We think there may be tax evasion. How's that for probable cause?

      Second, look at some of the examples in the article. The head of the Hong Kong stock market, Ronald Li Fook-shiu, was indicted, convicted and served his sentence. A decade later, he opened a bank account - so what? Are people trying to say that convicted criminals are never allowed to have another bank account?

      How much of the money that went into that bank account was proceeds of crime? It's VERY naive to believe that law enforcement is able to recover all the funds.
      I'm not saying that they shouldn't have a bank account, but once someone is done for serious crime then their bank accounts should receive extra scrutiny

      Finally, a lot of importance is placed on this being a "Swiss" bank. However, lots of banks are international.

      You're trying to deflect the issue here. The issue is the legal framework that protects secrecy and allows for all of the criminal activities to take place.
      Per my initial statement, this isn't just Swiss banks. Many well known banks have a subsidiary in Switzerland and similar jurisdictions who have VERY strong secrecy laws, it's Swiss Bankers, those that operate like them and the regulatory environment they operate in

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bsolar ( 1176767 )

        Well that really depends on just how private those matters are. Perhaps if plausible deniability for bankers and their management wasn't a thing then we would see more bankers serving time for accessory to and a bunch of the sort of thing the article exposes wouldn't be such an issue, but right now it is and these banks & bankers are facilitating crime

        Actually that's incorrect, as long as the banks provide a legal service which is only made illegal by the client's lack of proper reporting. There is AFAIK at least a sentence in the USA establishing that precedent, although I don't think at the federal level.

        We think there may be tax evasion. How's that for probable cause?

        If we go with the USA's standards, that is very unlikely to qualify as "probable cause". "Probable cause" is actually a stronger standard than "reasonable suspicion", but weaker than "beyond reasonable doubt". To establish "probable cause" it's insuffi

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nzkbuk ( 773506 )

          as long as the banks provide a legal service which is only made illegal by the client's lack of proper reporting

          You know it's the private bankers job to ASK those questions and KNOW what their clients are doing. It's called KYC (Know Your Client).
          While any high wealth client can say "I'm going to New York (or London) fotr two weeks and I want $500,000 (or £500,000) in cash waiting for me when I arrive because I prefer using cash over plastic" and the response is "Sure I'll make it happen" then there are still problems with the banking system. I can understand some parts of the world are cash only but that do

    • "There is a lot of anti-Swiss sentiment in play here" has nothing to do with it and your statements reek of bias.
    • In Switzerland, if the government thinks we're cheating on taxes, or laundering money, or whatever, they have to get a warrant. That's how it should be.

      Well, the tax office does request the banking copies of the year end overview. If you don't hand them over, I'm not sure how much trouble they have in getting those warrants and how much trouble one has afterwards. I'm not going to find out.

    • Re:A view from Switzerland (Score:5, Informative)

      by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @10:17AM (#62288439)
      Using the holocaust to play your own victim card.
      *slow clap*

      OK, I'm done giggling in amazement.
      Seriously, you should have left that section out. You probably had a lot of the readership on your side until then.

      Credit Suisse stonewalled repatriation of funds so hard that most Jews landed in a coffin before ever seeing a penny.
      They asked survivors for the death certificates of their parents. Because you know, they issued a lot of those at Auschwitz.
      They required the account number, a number that I'm sure parents made sure to give to their children.

      It required billion dollar lawsuits, multiple commissions within the Swiss government, and a security guard leaking documents, and some intercepted cables showing that the Swiss weren't just passive bankers for the Reich. They actively assisted it in identifying Jews whose money could be "liberated to those poor abused Germans".

      It took a boycott from all of Wall Street to even bring the Swiss big 3 to the table.

      So sincerely, from 98% of the world, fuck you dude.

    • Like it or not, we (the developed world) have a highly regulated/managed economy that depends on taxation for a lot of government spending. A total veil of privacy over financial affairs isn't really compatible with the level of regulation and taxation in our economy.

      Secret banking just leads to massive abuses -- money laundering, tax evasion, not to mention shadier shit involving corruption in government.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Corbets ( 169101 )

      Excellent post. As an almost-swiss (left while in the citizenship process due to job change) and previous employee of CS, I 100% agree with everything you wrote.

      I was around the roll-out of the US’ FATCA law, and I made similar comments about secrecy at the time. Many governments want to turn banks into their police force, and hold them accountable for whenever anything slips through never mind the success (failure) rates of their own police force.

      It’s a double standard, implemented because of p

  • Where did all these accounts move to? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cdrnet ( 1582149 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @02:17AM (#62287507)

    Since Credit Suisse closed most of them over the last decades and Switzerland essentially killed its banking privacy, they must have moved to some other place with more "protection"? Would be interesting to see some leaks with more recent data e.g. from some US banks.

  • Well (Score:1)

    by pele ( 151312 )

    Are we sure this is news? 30000 accounds? German newspaper? Sounds an awful lot like that thing from 2011.

  • It's going to change - eventually (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GeekWithAKnife ( 2717871 ) on Monday February 21, 2022 @04:08AM (#62287627)

    The reason corruption and fraud occurs is because it can. In a completely transparent banking system there's a fighting chance corruption and fraud will be greatly reduced but in a system that is shielded from scrutiny and shrouded in secrecy, even with the best of intentions corruption and fraud are assured as.

    There are legitimate reasons for secrecy but these are often used as a shield to hide illegitimate activities.

    As long as questionable banking practices are allowed to exist this will continue and really should come as no surprise.

    In the west of course this rule does not apply to all. Us common folk are dissected under a microscope like frogs. Large banks and multi-billion corporations get a lot of leeway with their tame regulators, industry insiders, ex-SEC staff and sponsored politicians to take the sting out of financial reform.

    There are many admirable things about the right to privacy that exists in Switzerland but is the right to privacy better than the transparency that would stop a lot of illegitimate activities?

    As a simplistic view I suggest we look to CCTV. Yes it is an invasion of privacy when everything with a camera can track and store your face...but has it reduced crime overall? Now every bus an train, shop and mall have CCTV. It has not eliminated crime but has greatly reduced the prospects of shop lifting, being assaulted on public transport etc.

    IMO more transparency in banking will have more positives than negatives...those hiding behind banking secrecy likely represent a substantial amount of business for the bank and so resistance is expected.

    Tax authorities already know everything I do with my money. I'm more than happy for them to know what everyone else, specifically corporations, governments and high net worth individuals are doing as well. - likely I'm biased but when we eventually look through the laundry basket we may find that some are very dirty indeed. (which not ironically is exactly what months of scrutinising the leak shows)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bsolar ( 1176767 )

      There are legitimate reasons for secrecy but these are often used as a shield to hide illegitimate activities.

      This is definitely true, but forfeiting secrecy in the name of uncovering potential illegitimate activities is a very dangerous rationale often leveraged to erode privacy rights.

      Switzerland's stance makes actually a lot of sense: it considers bank account information private information and the government can access private information only with a warrant, which requires some specific argument why the government believes a specific crime is taking place and why it believes the search would uncover it.

      This i

    • Now every bus an train, shop and mall have CCTV. It has not eliminated crime but has greatly reduced the prospects of shop lifting, being assaulted on public transport etc.

      Maybe if the cameras are monitored, here it just provides footage of crimes to play on the news.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There are legitimate reasons for secrecy but these are often used as a shield to hide illegitimate activities.

      So? We don't force everyone to live in permanently-lit glass houses just to put a stop to domestic violence.

      As long as questionable banking practices are allowed to exist this will continue and really should come as no surprise.

      And fat lot of good the transparency laws did to prevent the subprime crisis. Instead of punishment, the perpetrators got tax money.

      In the west of course this rule does not apply to all. Us common folk are dissected under a microscope like frogs. Large banks and multi-billion corporations get a lot of leeway with their tame regulators, industry insiders, ex-SEC staff and sponsored politicians to take the sting out of financial reform.

      So realistically you can safely let the common folk have their banking secrecy while you find other ways to go after corporate and political financial malversation. Or at least that would be my conclusion from your argumentation. But you don't seem to draw the same conclu

  • I'll get the popcorn (Score:3)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Monday February 21, 2022 @11:23AM (#62288661)

    Some rich people are shitting their pants.

  • Anyone claiming "they're not a Trump supporter" most certainly are.

  • Of course, everyone reads the summary and sees that "clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes" are exposed and thinks "Good. Serves them right for doing that stuff," but the unintended consequences are already being seen in perfectly legal and above board situations where someone just doesn't like what a particular client does based solely on their ideology and not at all whether the activity is legal. Point being that whistleblowers should have

  • That's what happens when you don't ban crypto.

    This is the only value that many, not all, fin intermediaries add. Provide some sort of barely plausible deniability to the big criminals of this world by using global Ba king networks to move money around till it becomes confusing enough.

    Crypto will democratize this and let the common man launder money from criminal sources too. At cheaper cost. Using DeFi (from 'defy the govt') smart contracts. Just use your wallet balance to join any pool or mixer and get pai

  • Is one of these accounts in my late father's name and the one my mother sent her life savings to "liberate"? If it is, then it has gold bars with their names engraved on them. That's what the fellow with the Nigerian name and accent told us!

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