Credit Suisse Leak Exposes Deals With Marcoses, Criminals And Corrupt Politicians

A massive leak from one of the world’s biggest private banks, Credit Suisse, has exposed the hidden wealth of clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption, and other serious crimes, from Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, corrupt politicians, drug and sex traffickers and corporations bribing autocrats, David Pegg, Kalyeena Makortoff, Martin Chulov, Paul Lewis and Luke Harding reported for The Guardian.

Photo Insert: Credit Suisse was one of the first banks to help the Marcoses ravage their own country and in one infamous episode even helped them open Swiss accounts under the fake names ‘William Saunders’ and ‘Jane Ryan.’

Details of accounts linked to 30,000 Credit Suisse clients all over the world are contained in the leak, which unmasks the beneficiaries of more than 100-billion Swiss francs (£80 billion) held in one of Switzerland’s best-known financial institutions.

The leak points to Credit Suisse’s failed due diligence despite pledges over decades to weed out dubious clients and illicit funds.

The Guardian is part of a consortium of media outlets given exclusive access to the data of the 18,000 bank accounts that were leaked to Süddeutsche Zeitung by a whistleblower who said Swiss banking secrecy laws were "immoral."

The leak includes personal, shared, and corporate bank accounts – holding, on average, 7.5 million Swiss francs (CHF).

Almost 200 accounts in the data are worth more than 100 million CHF, and more than a dozen are valued in the billions. While some accounts in the data were open as far back as the 1940s, more than two-thirds were opened since 2000. Many of those were still open well into the last decade and a portion remains open today.

Swiss banks have cultivated their reputation since as far back as 1713 when the Great Council of Geneva prohibited bankers from revealing details about the fortunes being deposited by European aristocrats. Switzerland soon became a tax haven for many of the world’s elites and its bankers.

The custom was enshrined in statute in 1934 with the introduction of Switzerland’s banking secrecy law, which criminalized the disclosure of client banking information to foreign authorities. Within decades, wealthy clients from all over the world were flocking to Swiss banks. Sometimes, that meant clients with something to hide.

“One of the most notorious cases in Credit Suisse’s history involved the corrupt Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda. The couple is estimated to have siphoned as much as $10bn from the Philippines during the three terms Ferdinand was president, which ended in 1986. It has long been known that Credit Suisse was one of the first banks to help the Marcoses ravage their own country and in one infamous episode even helped them open Swiss accounts under the fake names ‘William Saunders’ and ‘Jane Ryan.’ In 1995, a Zurich court-ordered Credit Suisse and another bank to return $500 million of stolen funds to the Philippines,” The Guardian reported.

The leaked data contains an account that belonged to Helen Rivilla, an attorney convicted in 1992 for helping launder money on behalf of Ferdinand Marcos. Despite this, she was able to open a Swiss account in 2000, as was her husband, Antonio, who faced similar charges that were subsequently dropped.

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