Every year is allowed its own international finance scandal. After 2021’s Pandora Papers, 2022 brings Swiss Secrets to shake the financial world. This large-scale investigation by the journalist consortium Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) sheds light on how Crédit Suisse has sheltered funds originating from criminal or illicit activity for years, with these funds amounting to more than 100 billion dollars at their peak.
Given the rigour of Swiss banking secrecy, it’s only thanks to a data-leak affecting more 18,000 accounts opened with Crédit Suisse between 1940 and the late 2010s that OCCRP can paint the portrait of a financial system that has welcomed the funds of notorious criminals and corrupt politicians.
Credit Suisse has firmly denied the allegations, arguing that the issues raised by the investigation were based on "partial, inaccurate or selective information taken out of context, resulting in tendentious interpretations of the bank's business conduct". The company added that most of the accounts in question had been closed long ago and that the remaining accounts had been properly audited.
A conversation with investigative reporters Stefano Valentino and Giorgio Michalopoulos, who have dissected the dark underbelly of green finance for Voxeurop and won several awards for their work.
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