Swiss authorities open criminal probe into bank data breaches

Swiss prosecutors have opened a criminal probe into the leak of thousands of account details at Credit Suisse last year, in a case that is likely to have a chilling effect on whistleblowing in the secretive alpine country.

Switzerland’s Federal prosecutor on Friday said it was investigating possible corporate espionage and breaches of the country’s banking secrecy laws in relation to an international investigation by a consortium of journalists into dirty money last February.

Organisations including the Süddeutsche Zeitung, New York Times, Guardian and Le Monde, published articles under the tagline “Suisse Secrets”, claiming to expose accounts at Credit Suisse holding billions of dollars on behalf of criminals and international human rights abusers.

The leak — covering information on more than 18,000 Credit Suisse accounts in total — was the single biggest in Swiss banking history. No Swiss media participated in the reporting as journalists and publishers are also liable for prosecution in Switzerland for breaching bank secrecy laws.

Credit Suisse said at the time of the leaks that it “strongly reject[ed] allegations and insinuations about the bank’s purported business practices”, and characterised the articles published as a “concerted effort to discredit . . . the Swiss financial marketplace”.

The bank said more than 90 per cent of the accounts involved — some of which dated back to the 1940s — were already closed.

The disclosures have not resulted in any legal investigations being opened by Swiss authorities against the bank.

Individuals in Switzerland can, however, serve up to five years in prison under article 43 of the country’s 1934 Bank Secrecy Act if they disclose, disseminate or publish information on the clients of Swiss banks. There is no public interest exemption.

Credit Suisse on Friday said it “could not comment on ongoing legal procedures”.

The bank has been conducting its own internal inquiry during the past few months, and has been co-operating with Swiss police authorities in the matter.

The existence of an official national criminal investigation was first reported by the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper.

Total banking secrecy in Switzerland ended in 2015 when the country’s banks began sharing limited client data on a confidential basis with regulators in other countries after scandals revealed the widespread use of Swiss institutions for tax evasion.

But secrecy is still taken extremely seriously in other regards — and non-official disclosures of even the most limited client data are rigorously punished.

A number of individuals have been prosecuted in recent years.

Most recently Hervé Falciani — a former IT employee of HSBC’s Switzerland-based private bank — was given a five-year sentence by Swiss courts in 2014 for “aggravated financial espionage”.

Falciani was the individual responsible for the leaking of the “Lagarde List” — a list of suspected tax evaders with accounts at HSBC — given to Christine Lagarde in her capacity as France’s then finance minister, which caused an international sensation when details of it became public.

Falciani spent years moving around Europe and fighting Swiss extradition requests and eventually settled in Spain after a court in Madrid ruled in 2018 that Switzerland’s concept of “financial espionage” had no basis in Spanish law.