Suisse Secrets: Probe reveals over $100 billion in Swiss banks

GENEVA: Independent Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which exposes crime and corruption, have announced to leak an exposé called “Suisse Secrets” having details of bank accounts containing over $100 billion in the Swiss bank.

The organisation said that leaked records of 18,000 bank accounts holding assets worth more than $100 billion are “upcoming”. “OCCRP and 47 other media outlets have been working on one of the world’s largest investigations into the shadowy world of Swiss banking,” said OCCRP.

The OCCRP said the investigation had uncovered the financial secrets of politicians, criminals and spies. According to the project, the money in these accounts is worth Rs 17,600 billion.

Suisse Secrets is an international investigation into one of the world’s wealthiest and most important banks. More than 163 journalists from 48 media outlets in 39 countries across the world spent months analyzing bank account information leaked from Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest lender.

The leak included more than 18,000 accounts that held in excess of US$100 billion at their peak. It is the only known leak of a major Swiss bank’s client data to journalists.

UPCOMING: Leaked records of 18,000 bank accounts holding assets worth $100+ billion.

OCCRP and 47 other media outlets have been working on one of the world’s largest investigations into the shadowy world of Swiss banking.

It’s called #SuisseSecrets pic.twitter.com/H5DEb81ahQ

— Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (@OCCRP) February 20, 2022

What is Suisse Secrets?

Switzerland is a well-known destination for money from all over the world, in part because of its banking secrecy laws. Banks are supposed to avoid clients who earned money illegally or were involved in crimes and reporters identified dozens of corrupt government officials, criminals, and alleged human rights abusers among Credit Suisse account holders.

The probe reveals Credit Suisse maintained relationships with some of these clients for years, though it is possible that some accounts were ordered frozen by law enforcement. The Suisse Secrets project investigates these account holders, whose exploitation of Swiss banking secrecy is a prime example of how the international financial industry enables theft and corruption.

The Suisse Secrets data was obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which coordinated the project along with OCCRP. Expand this box to see the full list of partners.

Leaked data

The Suisse Secrets data was provided to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous source more than a year ago. The source, however, did provide a statement explaining his or her motivations. It reads, in part:

“I believe that Swiss banking secrecy laws are immoral. The pretext of protecting financial privacy is merely a fig leaf covering the shameful role of Swiss banks as collaborators of tax evaders. … This situation enables corruption and starves developing countries of much-needed tax revenue.”

“I want to emphasize the fact that the responsibility for this state of affairs does not lie with Swiss banks but rather with the Swiss legal system. Banks are simply being good capitalists by maximizing profits within the legal framework they operate in. Simply put, Swiss legislators are responsible for enabling financial crimes and — by virtue of their direct democracy — the Swiss people have the power to do something about it.”

“I am aware that having an offshore Swiss bank account does not necessarily imply tax evasion or any other financial crime. I am sure that some of the accounts … have a legitimate reason for existing or that they have been declared to tax authorities in compliance with the relevant legislation. However, it is likely that a significant number of these accounts were opened with the sole purpose of hiding their holder’s wealth.”

Banking secrets

The leaked data includes information about more than 18,000 Credit Suisse accounts and 30,000 account holders. The information about each account includes the account number, the name of the holder or holders, the opening and closing dates, and the maximum amount ever present in the account. There is no indication of whether they are checking, savings, or investment accounts.

Credit Suisse has multiple subsidiaries, and has also acquired several banks over the years. Some of the account holders are people, while others are legal entities such as companies. They are domiciled in more than 120 jurisdictions and represent over 160 nationalities.

The total amount of money held in the accounts at their maximum was more than US$100 billion. The average account held about 7.5 million Swiss francs at its largest point.

Over a dozen accounts held more than 1 billion Swiss francs. These figures do not give any indication of the total amount of money moved through the accounts over the years, which is unknown but is likely to be much higher.

The data in the leak does not extend through the present day, though many of the accounts remained open well into the 2010s. The years with the most account openings were 2007 and 2008.

The year of peak account closings was 2014, coinciding with the introduction of new regulations in Switzerland to automatically exchange tax information on clients with foreign residency.