By Anadolu Agency
Switzerland’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has indicted a former Credit Suisse (CS) compliance officer on charges of money laundering and formally accused both Credit Suisse and its successor UBS of organizational failures that allegedly enabled the transfer of funds tied to the Mozambique Debt Scandal, according to a statement issued Monday.
The indictment centered on a commercial relationship linked to over $2 billion in loans that Credit Suisse granted in 2013 to three Mozambican state-owned companies — transactions that later triggered international investigations. In 2016, the OAG statement said, Mozambique’s Ministry of Economy and Finance sent around $7.86 million to accounts held at CS by a foreign firm suspected of involvement in the scandal.
The funds, the OAG said, are presumed to have been derived from a “running fee” obtained through corruption and misconduct in Mozambique.
Shortly after the money arrived, $7 million was transferred to accounts in the United Arab Emirates, the statement noted. Although internal inquiries began, the indicted compliance officer allegedly recommended terminating the commercial relationship instead of filing a suspicious transaction report with Switzerland’s Money Laundering Reporting Office (MROS). When the relationship was closed, an additional $609,000 and 28,000 Swiss francs (nearly $35,000) suspected to be of criminal origin were transferred abroad.
The OAG accused the officer of negligently enabling the laundering of these remaining funds.
Prosecutors said Credit Suisse, the Credit Suisse Group and their successor companies UBS SA and UBS Group SA failed to maintain adequate compliance systems, citing “considerable defects” in risk management and internal directives in 2016. CS and its parent company did not file a report with MROS until 2019, after the US Department of Justice opened its own criminal proceedings.
The OAG has charged UBS and UBS Group under corporate criminal liability provisions for failing to prevent the alleged offence. Proceedings against a second CS employee were abandoned for procedural-economy reasons, as the individual had already been convicted in a separate administrative case now under appeal.
The Federal Criminal Court will now handle the case, and the presumption of innocence applies until a final ruling is issued, according to the statement.