Credit Suisse whistleblowers say Swiss bank has been helping wealthy Americans dodge U.S. taxes
in a hastily arranged bailout earlier this month, may bring with it a fresh set of regulatory and legal problems for its new owner.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said his committee had received new information just this week from Credit Suisse about additional American undisclosed accounts that the bank held after 2014. The two former Credit Suisse employees, who worked as whistleblowers with the U.S. government and Senate investigators, told CNBC some of the bad behavior continued long after Credit Suisse's 2014 plea agreement. CNBC agreed to mask their identities on camera and to maintain their anonymity because they say they fear retaliation from the bank. They were interviewed in the weeks before Credit Suisse collapsed earlier this month.
Senior executives would call out individual bankers at quarterly meetings where they would read out the asset numbers for each banker. If a banker's number declined, the second whistleblower said, "you'd get exposed in front of your colleagues." And as a result, he said, "there may come moments where people simply omit saying things."
"Swiss banks are much more expensive, and there's a reason for that," he said. "If you could choose anywhere in the world you want to be, why would you pay more? Why would you be in a place which underperforms in terms of your return on assets?" "I tried to reach you, congratulation!!!!!" their private banker emailed back. "This is a big step for you and I know it was not easy."
But aides say they didn't find any evidence the family ever filed required paperwork with the US government or paid taxes on their assets. Instead, the assets were held under one family member's dual Latin American passport.As a result, the aide said: "They're potentially in legal jeopardy, to put it mildly."
Former Justice Department prosecutor Jeffrey Neiman, who is representing the whistleblowers, said he believes fraud is still ongoing and DOJ should claw back hundreds of millions of dollars in fines that the bank agreed to pay in 2014, but ultimately didn't have to pay. The bank agreed to pay $2.6 billion, but a federal judge only imposed a penalty of $1.3 billion at the time.
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