Over 30,000 account records have been evaluated by an international network of journalists.
(Photo: dpa)
Just when it seems that the most turbulent phase is over, Credit Suisse gets negative headlines again. After clients with frozen funds lost money, shareholders paid for losses on hedge fund deals and President Antonio Horta-Osorio stumbled upon violations of corona guidelines, leaked client lists are causing an uproar. A research network from the Süddeutsche Zeitung and numerous international media had revealed that the major Swiss bank kept accounts for despots and convicted criminals.
The allegations themselves are serious enough. Which financial institution wants to be accused of having tolerated convicted human traffickers and secret service agents from torture states as customers?
After all, the largely newly formed top management can rightly point out that it is not directly responsible for the business practices of the past. Long gone are the days when customers could deposit suitcases of cash in lockers without checking where the funds came from.
But at least as serious as the renewed negative headlines is the fact that a whistleblower was apparently able to smuggle large amounts of sensitive data out of the bank. No bank customer in the world wants their account information to get into the hands of third parties – no matter how much the data leak in this case is socially desirable because it reveals dubious transactions by public figures.
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However, many Credit Suisse customers should view the data leak with concern. The tech entrepreneur from China, the heir to a German family business or the sheikh from Qatar have one thing in common: They are happy to pay a little more for banking services from Switzerland for extra discretion and security.
But – and this is what makes the recent scandals so dangerous for Credit Suisse: CS recently failed in these two parade disciplines of the Swiss banking system. At Greensill, investors lost up to $2 billion in investor money they thought was invested in fail-safe interest-bearing securities. And now someone has been able to access historical account data for thousands of wealth management clients.
In the future, the Credit Suisse management will focus precisely on this business area in the strategy that the bank intends to lead out of the crisis. The CS bankers are supposed to raise an additional 200 billion dollars. In order for the strategy to be successful, the bank has to restore much of the trust that has been lost.
More: Swiss financial regulator Finma is examining revelations at Credit Suisse