Swiss banks are hardly exciting places. Family names adorn old buildings on alpine lakesides where most of the world’s wealthiest deposit their money. But take a look at what has been going on in Swiss courts this year and you might think again.
In late January, two Swiss banking executives were reprimanded in a case of serious money laundering. FINMA, the Swiss regulator, had uncovered CHF9 billion ($10 billion) of embezzled funds from Venezuelan oil company PDVSA stashed in 30 Swiss banks. Swiss newspaper Le Matin Dimanche called it ‘the largest source of suspicious funds in Swiss banks’.
In a country whose banking sector is still recovering from the reputational damage of the Petrobras, Odebrecht, 1MDB and FIFA scandals, this makes it very large indeed.
But then, just one week later, Franco-Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz was sentenced to prison for bribing the wife of the late president of Guinea. Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR), his Guernsey registered company, paid Mamadie Touré $8.5
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