Representatives of the Swiss banking group UBS and its French subsidiary defended themselves in court on Monday for offenses of laundering, tax fraud and illegal bank directing for which they are appearing on appeal by taking refuge behind their internal control procedures.
Sentenced in 2019 to a record fine of 3.7 billion euros, UBS is retried until March 24, suspected of having illegally sent Swiss salespeople to France to convince, during receptions, sports tournaments or concerts, rich people clients to keep their money safe from the tax authorities in Switzerland.
Read also: UBS on appeal to avoid a record fine
"
I know this bank and I know that we did not do the facts with which we are accused
", declared Christine Novakovic, the boss of UBS Europe, who was not in office during the events between. 2004 and 2012. "
The Swiss account managers were there to see their clients
" and not to canvass new ones, assured Ms. Novakovic, arguing that UBS was issuing instructions so that its teams respect "
French law and secrecy. Swiss bank
”.
In one of these documents appears a "
very clear sentence:
the account managers
can especially not help customers to circumvent the law or evade the tax authorities
", argued the person in charge.
Of the “
90,000 employees
” at the time, “
I don't know if someone did not make a mistake, I was not there
”, she continued, “
what can I say c 'is that we (...) had a system (internally) to enforce the law
”.
"
The charges against us are based on five employees
" in France and "
there were 697 employees, we did not hear them
", regretted earlier Béatrice Lorin-Guérin, director of human resources at UBS France.
"
We are not there to enrich Switzerland, we are there to develop in France
" and "
today I think we have succeeded
", she added.
Reckoning ?
The investigation targeting UBS France was informed by elements of former employees of the group, in particular Nicolas Forissier, former director of internal audit.
How to explain that he became a "
whistleblower?"
“Asked the Court of Appeal.
Internally, he has produced “
around sixty reports in which he absolutely does not mention this affair,
” noted Jean-Frédéric de Leusse, chairman of the management board of UBS France since 2012, arguing that Mr. Forissier had then “
conspired with people made redundant for serious misconduct
”.
"
We spend our lives checking that what people are doing is legal and documenting,
" he said on Wednesday.
"
So the idea that a small bank like that is a criminal organization, the platform for tax evasion in France, is absurd
."
