Five years after HSCB, Credit Suisse in turn avoids criminal prosecution in France. The second Swiss bank agreed to pay 238 million euros in France, while it was targeted by justice for illegal canvassing of customers and aggravated money laundering of tax fraud between 2005 and 2012, according to an agreement validated Monday by the president of the Paris court. By agreeing to sign this legal agreement in the public interest (CJIP) concluded with the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), Credit Suisse AG thus avoids a lawsuit in France and settles its dispute both with the tax authorities, to which it will pay 115 million euros in damages, only with the public prosecutor, paying a fine of 123 million euros.
The investigation by the financial prosecutor’s office began in 2016 after receiving reports in the context of mutual financial assistance for laundering tax fraud and illegal direct banking. The investigations revealed that 5,000 French clients had had a Credit Suisse account for many years, which had not been declared to the French tax authorities. The hidden assets amounted to two billion euros, recalled the president of the court Stéphane Noël.
Aggravating systemic character
“Credit Suisse did not send any account statements. The canvassing did not respect French legislation, the sales representatives traveled to France, in complete discretion. They identified prospects” with “visits to hotels, restaurants, never to the official premises of the French establishment”, he added.
The PNF calculated the fine by taking into account “increasing factors”, namely “the systemic nature, a long period, the creation of tools to conceal”, detailed the prosecutor François-Xavier Dulin. “The bank has created offshore structures to help its customers in their desire not to declare certain assets to the French administration”, he underlined.
The PNF also took into account the “lowering” factors which are the “corrective measures taken by the bank, the cooperation of the bank, the compensation of 115,000 million” to the tax authorities. The bank has twelve months to pay these sums, in three instalments. “It is a historical page, the vestige of an old era that the bank has just settled”, insisted during the hearing the bank’s lawyer, Charles-Henri Boeringer.
In a press release, Credit Suisse recalled that this public interest judicial agreement did not include an admission of guilt and marked “an important step in the proactive resolution” of disputes. Before Credit Suisse, HSBC Private Bank, a Swiss subsidiary of British banking giant HSBC, had already agreed to pay 300 million euros to escape a trial in France for laundering tax fraud on November 14, 2017. This was the very first public interest agreement signed in France.