How Swiss banking secrecy enabled an unequal global financial system
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Credit Suisse: Swiss Prosecutors Begin Case Over Dirty Money Leak
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Last updated Feb 03, 2023
Image credit: ReutersFacts
- Switzerland's Office of the Attorney General (OAG) on Thursday announced it had opened a case into last year's massive data leak of Credit Suisse's account records, which a media investigation alleged had showed the bank held more than $8B in illicit funds.
- The leak, which exposed 18K accounts including those of human rights abusers, fraudsters, and sanctioned businessmen, covered records dating from the 1940s through the 2010s. It was first shared with Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung last February, which then shared it worldwide.
- The OAG's criminal charges, reportedly brought by an anonymous source from inside the bank, include violations of the country's banking secrecy laws, damage to the bank, and the communication of confidential business information to foreign organizations or their agents.
- The original media investigation, which was conducted in coordination with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, also spotlighted that Article 47 of Switzerland's 2015 Banking Act carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison if insiders or journalists try to expose wrongdoing within a Swiss bank.
- The leak was covered by 48 media companies globally, however no Swiss media took part in the story, reportedly out of fear of being criminally prosecuted under the banking law.
- Regarding the formal complaint to the OAG, the Swiss daily Tagesanzeiger cited sources which claimed the complaint came from the bank itself.
Spin
Establishment-critical narrative
Switzerland's banking secrecy laws, along with their exploitation by the world's elite to conceal their wealth, have been common knowledge for centuries. Though the government has claimed it no longer conducts these tax evasion schemes, last year's data leak and the recent banking secrecy law seem to prove otherwise. Hopefully, this case will see the days of monarchs and oligarchs stashing their dirty money in the Alps finally come to an end.
Pro-establishment narrative
Most of the accounts uncovered in this leak have been or are in the process of being closed. This seemingly biased and coordinated attack against Credit Suisse fails to acknowledge that Switzerland has cooperated with 100 other countries under the Automatic Exchange of Information since 2017, an agreement the US isn't even a part of. Journalists and global NGOs should update their facts to reflect Switzerland and its banks' tremendous progress.
Nerd narrative
There is a 60% chance that, if the US Supreme Court hears a case on the Bank Secrecy Act by 2070, they will find it to be constitutional, according to the Metaculus prediction community.
