Super-rich ex-clients of Credit Suisse get mobile with an injured party organization. They claim that the major Swiss bank does not have its risk management under control. Now the CS is taking legal action against it.

With a view to the Annual General Meeting and the change of President, the staff at Credit Suisse (CS) had their hands full last week. Nevertheless, lawyers at the big bank found time to file a lawsuit against “CS Victims” in a court in London.

As the agency “Bloomberg” reported on Monday, this victims’ organization is also prevented from using an audit report that was once created for the Swiss Financial Market Authority (Finma) and publishing it on its website.

Filed a billion dollars in damage

As also reported by finews.ch, a paper that had been drawn up by a Swiss law firm on behalf of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) came to the public last February.

The report, written in 2017, traced the case of Patrice Lescaudron internally: the client advisor had defrauded wealthy private customers of the bank at CS in Geneva; the victims speak of a loss of up to a billion dollars. Among the victims is Bidzina Ivanishvili, the former prime minister and richest man in Georgia.

Lescaudron served two years in custody and was released in 2019. He killed himself last year.

Warning signs ignored

The “leaked” report suggested at the time that the big bank had ignored warning signals to its customer advisor for years. In autumn 2018, the CS was reprimanded by the Finma: They had insufficiently controlled Lescaudron.

The latest incidents at the big bank around the New York finance company Archegos and the Greensill Fund reinforce the Lescaudron victims in their allegation that the bank does not have the risks under control.

In an internationally coordinated action they have been trying for months to keep the CS harmless. They even recently hired the company of the well-known Swiss consultant and lobbyist Thomas Borer.

On the offensive for the first time

The bank, on the other hand, has always taken the position of being deceived by Lescaudron in the past. A Geneva criminal court had also recognized the CS as a victim of Lescaudron. With the lawsuit against the ex-customers, the institute is now going on the offensive for the first time.

It makes sense that the publication ban only applies to the “CS Victims” and the British company Metigen, which acts as coordinator; the various media companies to which the test report was leaked can continue to quote freely from the paper. A fact that the “CS Victims” criticized “Bloomberg” as “unheard of”.

You have already sounded out an appeal in the London court.