CREDIT Suisse bank, still reeling from losing billions of dollars last year, faced a fresh challenge: an international investigation allegation that it handled dirty money for decades.

A cross-border media investigation broke yesterday, claiming that the second-largest bank in Switzerland held billions of dollars of ill-gotten funds, claims based on a massive data leak.

Credit Suisse in a statement rejected the “allegation and insinuation”, saying that many of the issues raised are historical, some dating back as far as the 1940s.

The investigation, coordinated by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), unites 48 different media outlets worldwide, including Britain’s The Guardian and France’s Le Monde.

This latest project, dubbed “Suisse Secrets”, arose out of a leak of data to Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung newspapers a little over a year ago.

The leak included information on more than 18,000 bank accounts dating back to the 1940s and up to the 2010s, said the OCCRP.

It is the largest leak ever from a major Swiss bank, it added.

‘Tendentious interpretations’

The bank said: “Credit Suisse strongly rejects the allegations and insinuations about the bank’s purported business practices.”

“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.”

About 90% of the accounts reviewed are closed – or are in the process of being closed – before the press approached the bank, it added. And more than 60% were closed before 2015.

The OCCRP, in a statement on its website, said: “We believe the dozens of examples we have cited raise serious questions about Credit Suisse’s effectiveness and commitment to meeting its responsibilities.”

It said the investigation has found dozens of “dubious characters” in the data.

They included a Yemeni spy chief implicated in torture, an Azerbaijani strongman’s sons, a Serbian drug lord and bureaucrats accused of looting oil wealth in Venezuela.

The sums in accounts identified as problematic amount to more than US$8 billion (RM33 billion), said the OCCRP.

A series of setbacks

The international investigation is the latest in a series of setbacks that Credit Suisse has recently suffered.

In March, the bank was hit by the collapse of Greensill Capital, in which it had committed some US$10 billion through four funds.

The implosion of the US fund Archegos cost it more than US$5 billion.

In Switzerland, a former Credit Suisse employee is among the defendants in a major corruption trial that has just started, involving alleged money laundering and organised crime in Bulgaria.

The bank said it will “vigorously defend itself in court”.

News media involved in the investigation include The New York Times, Argentina’s La Nacion, Italy’s La Stampa and Africa Uncensored in Kenya. – AFP, February 21, 2022.