• Credit Suisse is first Swiss bank to be found guilty of corporate crime.
• First time a Swiss-owned and -domiciled bank has been prosecuted criminally.

On Monday, Credit Suisse became the first Swiss bank to be found guilty of corporate crime by the country’s authorities, in a landmark court ruling on the laundering of Bulgarian drug money.

The country’s highest criminal court handed down the judgment in the southern Swiss city of Bellinzona, in which a former relationship manager for the bank was also found guilty of money laundering offenses.

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The bank was ordered to pay an SFr2mn (€1.97mn) fine and €18.6mn in restitution to the Swiss government.

The case centred on Credit Suisse’s participation in receiving deposits from Bulgarian clients totaling millions of euros between 2004 and 2008. The court decided that the bank missed evident red signals, such as the transportation of large sums of cash in bags and the occurrence of two assassinations, which indicated to the likely illicit origins of the monies.

“The court found deficiencies within the bank during the period in question both with regard to the management of client relations with the criminal organisation, as well as with regard to the monitoring of the implementation of anti-money laundering rules by management, the legal service and the compliance department,” the Federal Criminal Court said in a statement.

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This is the first time a Swiss-owned and -domiciled bank has been prosecuted criminally.

Credit Suisse stated in a press release that the probe extended back more than fourteen years and that it would challenge the verdict.

“Credit Suisse is continuously testing its anti-money laundering framework and has been strengthening it over time, in accordance with evolving regulatory standards,” the bank said.