In 2015, Iqbal Khan was at the top of the world. The 34-year-old financer Wunderkind, who was transferred from Pakistan to Switzerland when he was simply young, was promoted to the Chief of International Asset Management at Credit Suisse, the Global Investment Bank. “Even Khan was shocked” by his quick climb, writes Duncan Mavin in his new book, “Meltdown: Greed, Scandal and Fall of Suisse Credit” (Pegasus Books), now. But his success would be short -lived.
Khan, who was widely seen as ‘crown prince’ [of Credit Suisse]. “The affair came to be known as” Spygate “.”
Only a few years after his dramatic establishment within the company, Khan realized that he was being beaten by private detective, employed by leaders at Credit Suisse. They were part of a team that would trace Khan for weeks. “They would observe him in his house when he was running when he was drinking a coffee with his ex -colleagues,” Mavin writes. “Their mandate was to take pictures and record evidence of anyone with whom Khan met,” and this included his children.
The investigation was driven by suspicions that Khan may try to destroy his best associates and take them to a competitive bank. Although Credit Suisse General Director Tidjane Thiam never publicly admitted the scheme, behind the scenes he allegedly withdrew that “Snoops had been amateur,” writes Mavin. Even more alarming, just weeks after Spygate was exhibited, the consultant who organized the oversight operation committed suicide in mysterious circumstances.
For any other bank, the scandal may have determined their heritage or even destroy it. But for Credit Suisse, one of the largest banks in the world, was business as usual. How did it come to this? The bank, founded in Switzerland in 1856, “was deeply embedded in the global economy,” writes Mavin. “Its clients were multinational billionaires and corporations. She funded massive infrastructure investments and provided loans to businesses and governments alike. It was too big to fail. “
And yet it failed, in slow motion over many decades and countless controversy.
Banking Bankers are not uncommon, but Credit Suisse “was the bank that continued my constant problems,” writes Mavin. “In other firms, there were years when everything seemed to be functioning properly, while Credit Suisse’s story reads as a long list of ruthless wrongdoing.”
Even the 2019 Saga Spygate was not an isolated incident. An investigation by the authorities found more evidence of other employees who were followed by private detectives, as well as the former CEO partner. They discovered evidence of the seven separate spy programs, for which some members of the executive board of the Suisse credit were fully aware. But “nothing was officially documented,” Mavin writes. Leaders “communicated on WhatsApp’s personal accounts or in text messages that were out of reach of regulators. In one case, a bill was changed to hide that it was related to the cost of spy employment.”
The fall of the company did not occur overnight. They had been doing for years, and in some ways it was the inevitable result of an financial worldview that privileged secrecy on ethics. Just as Switzerland appreciated neutrality, especially during World War II and II, their banks took this step further, providing “a safe haven for anyone who wants to preserve their wealth out of the broken eyes of their enemies,” writes Mavin. This included kleptocrats and dictators, strong brutal men and corrupt officials.
More terribly, they also served as a mediator for Nazis and fascists, both during and after World War II, taking gold and other valuable items stolen from the Jews and cleaning it “of Nazi coloring,” writes Mavin. Radu Lecca, a Nazi leading officer in Romania, and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini both had accounts with Credit Suisse. One of the bank branches in New York is said to have helped the Germans “hide the actual ownership” of their deposits, writes Mavin.
There are also harmful evidence of how they responded to Jews trying to seek account in their name. Immediately after the war, a Polish survivor of the Holocaust Holocaust named Estelle Sapir tried to get the money left by her late father, who would die in a concentration camp, from a Credit Suisse branch in Geneva. She was told that she would have to secure a death certificate.
“Estelle asked the bank officer who should seek a death certificate: Hitler, Himmler or Eichmann?” writes Mavin. “She ran, screaming, from the bank.”
Credit Suisse finally agreed to pay $ 500,000 SAPir, but it did not happen until 1998. And even then, a bank spokesman apologized “but also said that Swiss bank secret laws prevented them from confirming or denied whether any of the incidents described had ever occurred,” Mavin writes.
The mistreatment and secret by Credit Suisse were not limited to foreigners. Even their leaders can become victims. John Mack-nickname “Mack Ketika” for “his relentless approach to cost reduction,” Mavin writes as a company co-coat in 2001, and despite returning the bank back to the first time in years, he was fired in June 2004 in the most strange way possible.
“The bank had set up a whole shade operation in a different building across the road from its Manhattan office,” writes Mavin. Mack had gone to work for weeks without realizing that he was in a fully “staged” office. The truth was immediately being rebuilt next door.
In recent years, the scandals came fast and enraged, with “many of the most filthy secrets of the sick bank.. Transmitted to public,” writes Mavin. In February 2022, a group called the Crime and Organized Corruption Project revealed information over 18,000 accounts from the Swiss Bank, called “Suisse Secrets”. unsafe characters, including ‘the family of an Egyptian intelligence chief who overseen the torture of suspects for terrorism for the CIA; an Italian accused of clearing criminal funds; And a German executive that bribes Nigerian officials on telecommunications contracts, ‘”writes Mavin.
Then in April 2023, new discoveries showed that the bank had not closed hundreds of Nazi officials, including a convict in Nuremberg, until just a few years ago.
Finally came to Credit Suisse in June 2023, when it was bought for $ 3.2 billion by the Swiss Bank UBS Group AG, in a comprehensive agreement mediated by the Swiss Financial Supervisory Authority. But the exact reasons for Credit Suisse’s collapse are still open to debate. In addition to rampant corruption and repeated scandals – from 2010 onwards, “The bank paid fines more than $ 15 billion about the misconduct by its employees,” writes Mavin – she also had a expense problem.
According to Finma, Credit Suisse had a very wonderful approach to compensation “that failed to provide incentives for the right type of behavior,” writes Mavin. Employees were rewarded with major rewards, whether the bank had a good or bad year.
However, Mavin argues that the real reason for its destruction may have been its efforts to grow very quickly beyond the Swiss borders. Credit Suisse “had become a monster,” he writes, “a global bank of high octane investment, located on a relatively small, secret Swiss firm.”