Shares of Credit Suisse, immersed in a deep restructuring, continued to plunge on Wednesday after a series of scandals in recent years at the financial institution,
considered the "weak link" in the Swiss banking sector.
The bank saw its asset management arm reel
from the 2021 bankruptcy of British financial firm Greensill
, to which it had committed some $10 billion through four funds.
When an insurer refused to renew the contracts of Greensill -- a British company that used complex financial arrangements to lend money to companies to pay their bills -- the bank, no longer able to calculate the value of the funds, began liquidate them.
Greensill eventually went
bankrupt, sending the companies that relied on it for liquidity reeling
, a failure that also affected its creditors, including the Japanese giant SoftBank.
The headquarters of the Credit Suisse bank in Zurich-Oerlikon, Switzerland.
Photo EFE
the scandals
Four weeks later, the US fund Archegos could no longer inject money to cover its investments in derivatives,
triggering a sell-off on Wall Street.
Several large banks were affected, Credit Suisse the most,
with some 5,000 million dollars.
In October 2021, the bank was embroiled in
a corruption case in Mozambique
related to loans to state-owned companies.
The American and British authorities imposed sanctions on the bank amounting to 475 million dollars.
In Frankfurt, Credit Suisse shares tumbled.
Photo Reuters
The loans, granted between 2013 and 2016, should have financed maritime surveillance, fishing and shipyard projects, but
were partly diverted for bribes.
In December 2021, the Swiss tabloid
Blick
revealed that the bank's president, Antonio Horta-Osorio, had broken quarantine regulations related to the covid-19 pandemic.
Other revelations in the press followed, such as
the breach of health restrictions
to attend a tennis match at Wimbledon.
The veteran banker resigned less than nine months after taking office.
Research
In February 2022, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a consortium of 47 media outlets including
Le Monde and the New York Times
, published an investigation titled "Suisse secrets".
The investigation, based on account information from the 1940s to the late 2010s, reveals that the bank
housed funds from clients involved in criminal and corruption cases.
In March 2022, a Bermuda court confirmed that former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili had suffered losses on investments managed by Patrice Lescaudron, a former
Credit Suisse banker, fired in 2015
, convicted of fraud in Geneva in 2018 and who committed suicide two years ago. after.
In June 2022, the bank was convicted in Switzerland in
a money laundering case
linked to a Bulgarian cocaine ring.
He was fined 2 million Swiss francs.
In October 2022, the bank settled US litigation dating back to the 2008 financial crisis over mortgage-backed securities, settling in exchange for a payment of $495 million.
In France, he agreed to pay 238 million euros to avoid prosecution for
illegal prospecting of clients and aggravated tax fraud
between 2005 and 2012.
At the end of February 2023, two years after the Greensill bankruptcy scandal, the Swiss Financial Markets Authority (Finma) accused Credit Suisse of having "seriously breached its prudential
obligations"
in terms of risk management.
Last week, the bank postponed the publication of its annual report after a call from the US financial markets regulator (SEC), which raised questions about its accounts for the 2019 and 2020 financial years.
On Tuesday, Credit Suisse
acknowledged "material weaknesses"
in its internal controls in its annual report, sending shares tumbling.
On Wednesday, the collapse of the price accelerated after its main shareholder declared that it will not support the entity by increasing its participation.
AFP Agency
bp
look also
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