Switzerland probing Credit Suisse’s account data leak
SWITZERLAND’S Attorney-General’s Office (AGO) has launched a probe into a data leak in which thousands of former Credit Suite clients’ account details changed hands.
The AGO confirmed that it was investigating suspected acts of corporate spying and violations of banking-secrecy laws. This followed the news that details of 18,000 Credit Suisse accounts were leaked to an international consortium of media, which went on to publish a series of exposes in February 2022, known as “Suisse Secrets”.
The affected clients included drug barons and kleptocrats, who held more than US$100 billion with the bank in total.
The AGO said that the probe needed approval from Switzerland’s federal government, because the espionage allegations were considered a “political infraction”. Credit Suisse declined to comment.
The probe could dent efforts to boost transparency in secretive Switzerland. Bern’s blessing for it highlights the lengths to which Switzerland goes to protect banking secrecy, a principle enshrined in Swiss criminal law. The probe is also likely to intensify international criticism of the country’s tendency to prosecute whistleblowers, rather than any criminal activity exposed.
The data was leaked to German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous whistleblower. The daily then shared it with a non-profit journalism group and dozens of other news organisations globally. But Tamedia, the Swiss publisher of Tages-Anzeiger – a Swiss-German paper that had previously worked on such collaborative projects – said it could not work on Suisse Secrets, due to concerns about flouting the banking-secrecy law.
When the leaks were published a year ago, Credit Suisse said about 90 per cent of the accounts were closed or in the process of being closed. It said the media reports “appear to be a concerted effort to discredit not only the bank, but the Swiss financial marketplace as a whole, which has undergone significant changes over the last several years”. BLOOMBERG
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