- Several sanctioned persons had accounts with Credit Suisse.
- Bank secrecy restrictions make it easier to dodge laws.
Credit Suisse handled accounts for sanctioned persons and heads of state allegedly suspected of money laundering worth more than $100 billion until recently, according to data that has been leaked from the bank.
Not Currently Active Accounts Though
On February 20, the New York Times revealed that more than 18,000 bank accounts had been compromised. Data is available for accounts that were open from the 1940s through the 2010s but not for currently active accounts. King Abdullah II of Jordan and Nervis Villalobos, a former vice-minister of energy in Venezuela, were among the account holders with “millions of dollars in Credit Suisse.”
It has been reported that King Abdullah has been suspected of embezzling aid funds for his own purposes, while Villalobos admitted to money laundering in 2018. According to the New York Times, several other sanctioned persons had accounts with Credit Suisse.
The New York Times wrote:
“Other account holders included sons of a Pakistani intelligence chief who helped funnel billions of dollars from the United States and other countries to the (Mujahideen) in Afghanistan in the 1980s.”
Bank secrecy restrictions make it easier to dodge laws prohibiting Swiss banks from taking deposits from known criminals, assuming they are implemented at all. The New York Times noted that this seems to have made Switzerland an attractive option for criminals looking to conduct international financial operations.
In the crypto industry, which has long been accused of abetting crime, the irony of a major financial institution helping high-level crooks was not missed. A Chainalysis estimate of criminal crypto whales’ 2021 holdings of $25 billion eclipses the $100 billion in deposits revealed by the breach.
