The Suisse Secrets investigations – released today by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Guardian and 45 other media outlets – reveal previously unknown breaches, dubious clients and volume of dirty money recycled by one of Switzerland’s largest banks, Credit Suisse. After yet another massive bank scandal, it is time for governments around the world to take decisive action against these professional enablers of financial crime.
Leaked confidential documents reportedly show that Credit Suisse banked with high-risk clients – for years – despite significant red flags. This continued even after the bank pledged to crack down on shady money. Journalists have identified dozens of dodgy customers – including politically exposed people – from around the world, starting from the 1940s and leading up to the past decade. Credit Suisse rejected allegations and said it had taken all the appropriate steps in relation to flagged accounts, but journalists’ findings suggest otherwise.
The leaked data contains information about four citizens of Uzbekistan. Among them is the wife of Uzbekistan’s first deputy prime minister, Achilbay Ramatov, who previously held the additional roles of head of the state railways company and transportation minister. The maximum account balance reached more than 954 thousand Swiss francs (1.03 million dollars).
The power of attorney on the account was held by her daughter and by the co-founder of Orient Group, a major conglomerate that did business with the state railways while her husband was in charge. Ramatova closed her Credit Suisse account after discovering that her offshore company was being investigated for money laundering.
Timur Tillyaev's aunt, whose wife is Lola Karimova, is the daughter of the late President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov. Tillyaeva shares her Credit Suisse account with Nikita Kalinichenko, who, according to media reports, was her husband and ran Abu Sahiy, one of Central Asia's largest shopping malls, on Tillyaev's behalf.
OCCRP’s position
The Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime in its statement emphasized that opening a Swiss bank account is not a crime, and all journalists working on the project acted from this position. There is no excuse in responsible journalism for publishing private banking data if it is not in the public interest, the report said.
“Therefore, in the Credit Suisse Secrets project, the data from the leak was used only as a starting point. They will never be made public in the form in which the journalists received them,” the organization noted.
Journalists verified the accuracy of the data and studied Credit Suisse customers for several months.
