"No remorse" Ex-CS top manager must pay CHF 100,000 fine
For the first time, a member of the CS Group Executive Board has been fined by Switzerland in connection with one of the many scandals that the big bank indulged in before its demise. Former Head of Risk Lara Warner is to pay a fine. And the Office of the Attorney General is also investigating.
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- According to a newspaper report, Switzerland is fining former head of risk Lara Warner because Credit Suisse failed to report a suspicion of money laundering.
- According to the penal order, Warner showed "no remorse".
- The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland is also said to be investigating the former CS manager.
The Federal Department of Finance (FDF) has issued a criminal order against the former head of risk at Credit Suisse (CS), Lara Warner, as reported by the Tamedia newspapers. Warner was responsible for misconduct at the bank in 2016, when 8 million dollars were deposited in a CS account belonging to a company involved in the Mozambique affair.
According to the FDF, a suspicion of money laundering should have arisen, but the bank did not file a suspicious activity report. Warner was therefore ordered to pay a fine of CHF 100,000, but the ruling is not legally binding.
Warner's lawyer has announced that the former Head of Compliance and Risk, who reported directly to CEO Tidjane Thiam, will demand a court ruling.
Also in the sights of the Office of the Attorney General
It is a "first in the legal investigation into the abuses at the defunct major bank Credit Suisse", write the Tamedia newspapers: "One of the Swiss parent company's top executives is being held personally accountable by the authorities for misconduct in one of the numerous financial scandals."
The so-called Moçambique affair was one of several embarrassing cases for CS, on which the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) published its conclusions in October 2021. According to the conclusions, the London branch of Credit Suisse had brokered loans worth one billion dollars to two state-owned companies in Moçambique in 2013, which were officially intended to finance coast guard ships and a tuna fishing fleet in the poor East African country.
The newspapers go on to write that the FDF's penal order contains "further explosive information": Warner had also been targeted by the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland. The authorities are conducting two criminal proceedings in connection with the Mozambique affair. The Office of the Attorney General explicitly extended one of these to Warner last November.
Criminal proceedings against UBS
The criminal proceedings are also directed against a former CS employee who was lower down in the hierarchy, as well as against the new CS owner UBS.
The presumption of innocence applies both in the proceedings of the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland and in the FDF's criminal ruling, which is not legally binding.
