Credit Suisse

Credit Suisse Group AG was the parent of Credit Suisse AG, a bank incorporated on July 5, 1856, with its seat in Zurich; the group was incorporated on March 3, 1982.¹ UBS completed its takeover of the group on June 12, 2023.²

The Chiasso affair of 1977

Time reported on July 18, 1977 that Ernst Kuhrmeier, manager of the bank's branch at Chiasso in Switzerland, was in jail awaiting trial on a charge of "disloyal management" for allegedly manipulating more than 800 million dollars. The magazine reported that over the years Kuhrmeier had funneled 868 million dollars of the branch's deposits to Texon Finanzanstalt, a Liechtenstein holding company he had founded in 1961, which bought stakes in more than 150 Italian companies, and that he concealed the dealings from superiors in Zurich. It reported that the newly elected board chairman, Oswald Aeppli, told about 3,000 shareholders that a team of 100 had not yet sorted out the losses, and that other bankers estimated the cost at 400 million dollars.³

Accounts of the Nazi period

The Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland and the Second World War, chaired by Jean-François Bergier, reported in 2002 that during the war the Swiss banks lent to a large variety of German companies, that Credit Suisse (the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt) worked closely with Deutsche Bank, a cooperation that extended to dealings in looted gold, and that from 1943 Credit Suisse provided most of the loans to the Bank der Deutschen Luftfahrt, a bank founded in 1939 to expand the Luftwaffe. It reported that in December 1938 Credit Suisse considered buying the New York bank Speyer & Co., which a senior manager described as still considered Jewish, with "an odour not easily effaced," and that in 1940 it opened its own New York agency on the basis of assets purchased from Speyer. It reported that there was some indication that documents were destroyed, since the bank had engaged in business transactions with the SS in 1944 and 1945 arranged by Deutsche Bank's Swiss representative, Alfred Kurzmeyer. A search of its records against a list of 460 known Nazis and persons tried at Nuremberg found fourteen matches with suspicious accounts at predecessor banks. In the registration of dormant accounts under the decree of 1962, the commission reported, Credit Suisse, Volksbank and Bank Leu held that accounts below 100 francs should not be reported; the Swiss banks collectively ordered 14,186 blank forms and submitted 1,184 completed ones, and Credit Suisse disclosed one fifth of the assets originally identified as problematic.⁴

Class actions against Credit Suisse and another Swiss bank were filed in October 1996 in the Eastern District of New York. A global settlement was agreed in January 1999 and approved on July 26, 2000, under which the Swiss banks committed to pay 1.25 billion dollars. Credit Suisse committed to pay up to one third, and made its final payment into escrow on November 23, 2000.⁵

Nazi-linked accounts, 2020 to 2026

In March 2020 the Simon Wiesenthal Center notified Credit Suisse that it had credible information that the bank held Nazi-linked accounts that had not been disclosed in the investigations of the 1990s. The bank retained the forensic firm AlixPartners and, with the Center's support, retained Neil Barofsky of Jenner & Block in June 2021 as Independent Ombudsperson to oversee that review. In February 2023 the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, Chuck Grassley, received allegations about the removal of Barofsky in late 2022, and he and the chairman, Sheldon Whitehouse, issued the committee's first subpoena since 1991 to obtain Barofsky's report. On April 18, 2023 the committee released that report and AlixPartners' initial report. It stated that the reports showed nearly 100 previously undisclosed Nazi-linked accounts, some open until as recently as 2020, that the bank had maintained accounts for at least 99 individuals who were senior Nazi officials in Germany or members of Nazi-affiliated groups in Argentina, that seventy Argentine accounts with plausible links to Nazis were opened after 1945 and at least fourteen remained open into the twenty-first century, and that the bank's investigation had been limited by scoping restrictions. The committee stated that, as a result of its inquiry, the bank had committed to investigate further its apparent role in supporting Nazis fleeing justice.⁶ On August 17, 2023 the committee released the unredacted report. It stated that 64,000 sets of potentially relevant records were not part of the bank's investigation and that the bank had blocked Barofsky and a historian from materials.⁷

Barofsky, a former Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 3, 2026, after UBS had taken over the investigation and rehired him. He stated that the investigation had so far determined that 628 individuals and 262 legal entities within its scope had account relationships with Credit Suisse. The accounts he described included four wartime accounts of the German Foreign Office held under a pseudonym, an account used by SS officer Leo Volk on behalf of the SS economic enterprises, an account of the Shanghai office of the arms maker Rheinmetall-Borsig, and accounts of the German Red Cross. He stated that the registry card for the Volk account, which showed that as of 1944 it was controlled by Volk and by Kurzmeyer, remained in the bank's files, and that when the Bergier commission asked in 2001 whether the bank had evidence of a business relationship with the SS enterprises the bank answered that there were no such indications; he stated that the bank's own research team had found a document confirming the account in the late 1990s. He stated that the bank executed forced transfers of Jewish clients' assets into accounts of Nazi-affiliated banks. He stated that in 1997 the bank cancelled publication of a history of its predecessor Bank Hofmann out of concern about "damages claims by former concentration camp prisoners." He stated that the bank provided banking services and acted as landlord for the Argentine Immigration Office in Bern, which ran an escape route for Nazis to Argentina supported by at least one million Swiss francs from the government of Juan Perón, and he cited a Central Intelligence Agency description of the company Carlos Fuldner founded in 1950 as a group of former Wehrmacht and Nazi technicians. He stated that UBS provided full access to the archives until November 2025, when, shortly after he told UBS that the committee was considering a hearing, it informed him that it would conduct a privilege review and withhold some materials. He also wrote that UBS "deserves credit" for its commitment to supplementing the historical record.⁸

In his opening statement at that hearing, Grassley stated that UBS had taken legal action in New York against the Simon Wiesenthal Center before Judge Edward Korman, and that its outside counsel, Gibson Dunn, was reviewing and filtering the material available to Barofsky.⁹

The Geneva accounts of the Enterprise

The Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, by Lawrence Walsh, records that Albert Hakim was the principal shareholder of Lake Resources, Inc., a Panamanian shell corporation established in May 1985, and that the corporation owned the account at Credit Suisse in Geneva that was the Enterprise account receiving the proceeds of the Iran arms sales. On November 21, 1989, when Hakim pleaded guilty, Lake Resources pleaded guilty to a corporate felony charge of illegally diverting 16.2 million dollars of those proceeds from the United States government.¹⁰ A memorandum of July 8, 1985 by the Enterprise's Swiss fiduciary agent, quoted in the report, refers to debit advices "on the Credit Suisse account of Energy" for transfers to a Liberian company, Defex S.A., created to conceal the Enterprise's mark-ups from the contras.¹¹

The report records that Elliott Abrams gave a Bruneian official an account number for a 10 million dollar contribution to the contras that was meant to be the Lake Resources account at Credit Suisse in Geneva (386.430.22.1) but had two digits transposed (368.430.22.1) in the number that Oliver North provided to Abrams on a card typed by his secretary; that on August 19, 1986 the Sultan of Brunei ordered the transfer of 10 million dollars to Credit Suisse, Eaux Vives branch, Geneva, account 368430-22-1; and that Swiss authorities said the money was returned to Brunei. It records that in late 1989 the Independent Counsel obtained information that the deposit had passed through an account or accounts controlled by or on behalf of Bruce Rappaport, a Swiss businessman, and that in August 1989 Rappaport's lawyers received a letter from the bank stating: "Credit Suisse knows the identity of the person in whose account the Sultan of Brunei's $10 million was placed. Neither Bruce Rappaport, nor any entity directly or indirectly controlled by Bruce Rappaport was the recipient of the Sultan of Brunei's $10 million." Rappaport told the Independent Counsel in October 1990, under an immunity agreement, that the account was not his and that he did not know whose it was; the Independent Counsel was unable to determine the recipient.¹² The report also records that Michael Ledeen said he asked the Israeli arms brokers Al Schwimmer and Yaakov Nimrodi in October 1985 to open a bank account to cover Iran arms sales expenses, that an account was opened in Switzerland, and that he later received a letter from Credit Suisse dated April 23, 1987 stating that the account was never used and no money was ever deposited in it.¹³

PROMIS and the Israel Desk

Ari Ben-Menashe wrote in Profits of War (1992) that an abridged version of the PROMIS software with a trap door was sold by Degem to Credit Suisse in 1985, and that the Likud Party, which controlled Israel's intelligence network, was interested in learning which Israelis had opened accounts there and might approach account holders for a "donation" or threaten exposure. He also wrote of an arrangement in which 450 million dollars was to be transferred from Credit Suisse to the Bank of Budapest in Hungary, with Robert Maxwell's Berlitz language schools as the conduit. Ben-Menashe is the only source cited here for these accounts.¹⁴

The annual reports of Credit Suisse for 2021 and 2022 state that it received governmental and regulatory inquiries concerning cross-border services provided by its Switzerland-based Israel Desk, and that it was conducting a review and cooperating with the authorities.¹⁵

United States sanctions, 2009

In December 2009 the bank announced a settlement with the New York County District Attorney's Office, the Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Office of Foreign Assets Control over United States dollar payments between April 2002 and 2007 involving parties subject to United States economic sanctions. It entered deferred prosecution agreements and an agreement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control and agreed to pay 536 million dollars. It stated that it had terminated business with sanctioned parties by 2007 and closed its representative office in Tehran.¹⁶

Cross-border tax evasion and the 2014 plea

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations reported on February 26, 2014 that, as of 2006, Credit Suisse had over 22,000 United States customers with Swiss accounts whose assets, at their peak, exceeded 12 billion Swiss francs. It reported that from at least 2001 to 2008 the bank recruited United States clients, that by 2008 over 1,800 bankers were opening and servicing accounts for them, and that the United States had obtained the names of only about 230 clients with hidden accounts at the bank. It described a banker who handed a customer bank statements hidden in a Sports Illustrated magazine at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, and recruiting at the annual "Swiss Ball" in New York. The subcommittee collected about 100,000 documents and conducted 23 interviews. It noted that, aside from UBS, the Justice Department had prosecuted only one of the Swiss banks suspected of misconduct. At the hearing the witnesses were the chief executive, Brady Dougan, the general counsel, Romeo Cerutti, and the Swiss private banking co-heads Hans-Ulrich Meister and Robert Shafir, followed by Deputy Attorney General James Cole and Assistant Attorney General Kathryn Keneally of the Tax Division.¹⁷

The bank's annual report for 2014 records that it received a grand jury target letter from the Justice Department in July 2011, that on February 21, 2014 it agreed to pay about 196 million dollars to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and that on May 19, 2014 it pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to assist United States customers in presenting false income tax returns. The settlement totaled 2,815 million dollars: 2,000 million dollars for the Justice Department, including 666.5 million dollars in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and a fine of 1,333.5 million dollars that included the SEC's 196 million dollars, 715 million dollars for the New York State Department of Financial Services, and 100 million dollars for the Federal Reserve. The sentencing hearing took place on November 21, 2014, and the bank engaged an independent monitor reporting to the Department of Financial Services.¹⁸

Lobbying Disclosure Act filings list outside registrants for Credit Suisse Securities (USA) in 2013 to 2015 including the Podesta Group, Covington & Burling, ACG Advocacy, Hogan Lovells and Peter Blocklin. The Podesta Group's quarterly filings for 2014 list the issues for the first quarter as "Banking capital requirements. Corporate tax reform.", for the second and third quarters as "Banking capital requirements.", and for the fourth quarter as "Pension policy."¹⁹

Officers and shareholders

The annual report for 2014 shows Urs Rohner as Chairman of the Board and Brady Dougan as Chief Executive Officer, and records that the board appointed Tidjane Thiam, then Group Chief Executive of Prudential plc, to succeed Dougan, who was to step down at the end of June 2015 after eight years in the post. The same report lists indirect shareholders by disclosure notification: The Olayan Group, through Crescent Holding GmbH, 88.5 million shares or 6.7 percent as of February 25, 2013; the Qatar Investment Authority, through Qatar Holding LLC, 82.0 million shares or 5.2 percent as of October 23, 2013; and Harris Associates L.P., 81.5 million shares or 5.2 percent as of November 4, 2013. The table as of December 31, 2014 also lists purchase rights of 8.0 percent for the Olayan Group, relating to 1.725 billion dollars of 9.5 percent tier 1 capital instruments it held, and of 16.5 percent for the Qatar Investment Authority, relating to 1.72 billion dollars and 2.5 billion Swiss francs of such instruments and to options.²⁰ The annual report for 2022 lists the Saudi National Bank at 395.5 million shares or 9.88 percent in a notification of December 10, 2022, the Qatar Investment Authority at 5.03 percent (November 17, 2021) and the Olayan Group, through Competrol Establishment, at 4.93 percent (December 12, 2018).²¹

Employees listing "Credit Suisse" as employer gave 256,403.03 dollars in 485 itemized contributions to Obama for America in the 2008 cycle, and employees listing "UBS" gave 267,344.97 dollars in 518 contributions, according to the Federal Election Commission's employer totals for the committee.²²

Mozambique financings

The SEC's order of October 19, 2021 found that between 2013 and 2016 three former Credit Suisse bankers, identified only as Banker 1, Banker 2 and Banker 3, took kickbacks of at least 50 million dollars in connection with three transactions: a 622 million dollar syndicated loan in 2013 to Proindicus, a state-owned company of Mozambique, of which the bank provided 504 million dollars; an 850 million dollar issue of loan participation notes for Empresa Moçambicana de Atum (EMATUM), to which the bank also provided 500 million dollars of financing; and a 2016 exchange offer of those notes for sovereign bonds. It found that the improper payments to the bankers, intermediaries and Mozambican officials totaled at least 200 million dollars, that the bankers hid the scheme and their kickbacks from other members of management, that offering materials falsely stated the proceeds would be used for tuna fishing, and that the bank did not disclose its conflict as a creditor of Proindicus. It stated that Mozambique disclosed the Proindicus and Mozambique Asset Management transactions in April 2016, that the International Monetary Fund and donors halted support, and that Mozambique defaulted. The order records that Mozambique has disputed the validity of the guarantees.²³

The bank's annual report for 2021 states that the Eastern District of New York unsealed an indictment on January 3, 2019, that three former employees pleaded guilty on May 20, July 19 and September 6, 2019, and that on October 19, 2021 Credit Suisse Group AG entered a three-year deferred prosecution agreement on a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with a net penalty to the Justice Department of about 175.5 million dollars. Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) Limited pleaded guilty to one count of the same conspiracy. The SEC penalty was 65 million dollars with about 34 million dollars of disgorgement and interest, and the Financial Conduct Authority penalty about 200 million dollars with forgiveness of 200 million dollars of Mozambique's debt. The Swiss regulator Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority found that the bank violated its duty to file a suspicious activity report.¹⁵ The regulator's own release stated that the two 2013 loans, guaranteed by the state and together about one billion dollars, made up almost 6 percent of Mozambique's gross domestic product; that before the 2016 conversion of the EMATUM notes the parent company had information indicating that several hundred million dollars may have been misused and approved the restructuring regardless; and that a suspicious payment of about 8 million dollars to an adviser of Mozambique went through the bank, which terminated the relationship and did not file a suspicious activity report until 2019, after the Justice Department had indicted three former employees.²⁴

The three former bankers, Andrew Pearse, Detelina Subeva and Surjan Singh, testified against Jean Boustani, an employee of the shipbuilder Privinvest, which is controlled by Iskandar Safa. Katharina Bart reported in finews.com on December 2, 2019 that a United States court found Boustani not guilty of three conspiracy charges, and that Pearse told investigators that Privinvest had also funneled money to the son of Mozambique's leader at the time. She reported that Credit Suisse had said that the three disguised their dealings from management.²⁵

Observation of executives and employees, 2016 to 2019

The Swiss regulator stated on October 19, 2021 that between 2016 and 2019 Credit Suisse planned seven "observations," most of which were carried out; that in two cases members of the executive board were observed in Switzerland, together with other former employees and third parties abroad; that decisions were taken informally, the bank's security service was significantly involved, text messaging services were used contrary to internal policy, and in one case an invoice was altered to conceal the cost; and that several members of the former executive board were informed in August 2019 of the planned observation of an employee in Asia. It found that statements made by the bank to the public and to the regulator proved partially incomplete or inaccurate, reprimanded two individuals, and opened enforcement proceedings against three others.²⁶ The annual report for 2019 records that Iqbal Khan left the bank in July 2019 as head of International Wealth Management, succeeded by Philipp Wehle; that Pierre-Olivier Bouée was succeeded as Chief Operating Officer by James B. Walker in October 2019; and that the board accepted the resignation of Tidjane Thiam, announced on February 7, 2020 after a discussion with him of the reputational impact of media coverage of the observation incidents of 2019, and appointed Thomas Gottstein as Group Chief Executive Officer in his place effective February 14, 2020.²⁷

Suisse Secrets

On February 20, 2022 the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Süddeutsche Zeitung published reports from leaked records of more than 18,000 Credit Suisse accounts, opened from the 1940s until well into the last decade and holding more than 100 billion dollars. The unnamed source of the data said in a statement that Swiss banking secrecy laws are "immoral." The project reported that 15 intelligence figures or their close relatives held accounts, among them Sa'ad Khair, head of Jordan's General Intelligence Directorate from 2000 to 2005, whose account opened in 2003 and reached 28.3 million Swiss francs; the sons of Pakistan's Akhtar Abdur Rahman, head of the Inter-Services Intelligence during the Afghan war, whose accounts were opened on July 1, 1985 and in January 1986; Ghaleb Al-Qamish, head of Yemen's Political Security Office, whose account opened in 1999 and held almost 5 million Swiss francs by 2006; and the family of Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, whose account opened in February 2003 and was worth 63 million Swiss francs by 2007. It reported that the data contained no evidence that the Suleiman account was closed after the fall of Hosni Mubarak. It reported that at Mubarak's trial a judge cited testimony from Suleiman and other officials that the intelligence agency set up front firms using the tycoon Hussein Salem, and that Salem held accounts at the bank, one worth 105 million Swiss francs by 2003. It quoted a South Asian intelligence source with knowledge of Afghanistan operations, who spoke to it anonymously, as saying of Akhtar: "A lot of money was siphoned off from the Afghan war and into his bank accounts." Ghazi Khan, one of the Pakistani brothers, called the information on the family's accounts "not correct" and said it was "denied." Credit Suisse declined to comment on individual cases and said it operated in compliance with applicable laws and had strengthened its risk management framework.²⁸

At the 2022 annual general meeting the Ethos Foundation and other shareholders proposed a special audit concerning the supply chain finance funds and Suisse Secrets, and on April 29, 2022 the shareholders rejected the proposal.²¹

Greensill and Archegos

On March 1, 2021 the boards of four supply chain finance funds managed by Credit Suisse subsidiaries suspended redemptions, citing valuation uncertainty over assets originated by Greensill Capital, which became insolvent in the United Kingdom on March 8, 2021. The last net asset value was about 10 billion dollars. The bank stated that expected losses were concentrated in positions with a net asset value of about 2.3 billion dollars relating to the GFG Alliance, Katerra and Bluestone.¹⁵ In June 2022 the asset manager reached an agreement with Bluestone Resources and its shareholders that included recurring payments from Bluestone and from its owners, described in the annual report as the family of Bluestone chief executive James C. Justice III, of up to 320 million dollars to all noteholders.²¹

The Swiss regulator concluded its Greensill proceedings on February 28, 2023. It found that a Credit Suisse risk manager recommended against a bridging loan to Greensill and that a senior manager overruled him, that the bank used employees responsible for the Greensill relationship to answer critical questions and relied on answers from Lex Greensill himself, and that the bank made partly false and overly positive statements to the regulator. It opened proceedings against four former managers.²⁹

The bank's annual report for 2021 records an aggregate loss of 4,798 million Swiss francs from the failure of the hedge fund Archegos Capital Management and a recovery of compensation awards from certain individuals.¹⁵ The regulator concluded its Archegos proceedings on July 24, 2023. It found that the bank's position was 24 billion dollars in March 2021, four times that of the next largest hedge fund client and more than half of the group's equity, that the executive board was not informed, that limit overruns were met by raising limits, and that the bank paid out 2.4 billion dollars two weeks before the collapse. The release stated that the United States Federal Reserve fined the bank 268.5 million dollars and the Prudential Regulation Authority 87 million pounds.³⁰

The UBS takeover

On March 19, 2023 the Swiss regulator approved the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS. It stated that the group faced a crisis of confidence with considerable outflows of client funds, that the extraordinary government support triggered a write-down of the nominal value of all additional tier 1 debt of about 16 billion Swiss francs, and that the Swiss National Bank would provide liquidity assistance backed by a default guarantee of the Confederation.³¹ The Federal Department of Finance records a federal loss protection guarantee for UBS of 9 billion Swiss francs and a guarantee of 100 billion Swiss francs in favor of the National Bank, completion of the takeover on June 12, 2023, termination of both guarantees by August 11, 2023, and a partial decision of the Federal Administrative Court of October 1, 2025 revoking the write-down decree.²

The regulator's report of December 19, 2023 states that since 2012 it conducted 43 preliminary investigations of the bank, issued nine reprimands, filed sixteen criminal charges, and completed eleven enforcement proceedings against the bank and three against individuals.³² The Parliamentary Investigation Committee of the Swiss parliament stated on December 20, 2024 that responsibility for the loss of confidence lay with the bank's board of directors and executive board, who had defied numerous interventions by the regulator, criticized the regulator's relaxation of capital requirements in 2017, and found no causal misconduct by the authorities.³³

Bulgarian clients

The bank's annual report for 2021 states that the Swiss Office of the Attorney General charged Credit Suisse AG on December 17, 2020 over its diligence and controls applied to Bulgarian former clients who, the office alleged, laundered funds through its accounts, that the trial took place in the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in the first quarter of 2022, and that the bank believed its diligence and controls complied with applicable legal requirements.¹⁵

Epstein files

A single page of a statement in the Justice Department's Epstein library, bearing the Bates number JPM-SDNY-00061899 and the legend "Confidential Treatment Requested by JPMorgan Chase," is headed "CS SEC EUR LTD: F/B/0 FINANCIAL TRUST" and states that it is a Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC statement whose positions are carried by Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) Limited. Its multi-currency portfolio summary shows a cash balance of 89,880 dollars, a short market value of 421,343.97 dollars and a total portfolio value of negative 340,451.64 dollars; the page does not state the statement period.³⁴