Lawyers acting for Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia's former premier, are blaming a Credit Suisse 'client advisor' or relationship manager for stealing and then laundering money. Their formal criminal complaint, however, is against the bank itself.

Ivanishvili's lawyers seem to be arguing in private that the RM somehow embezzled or siphoned off the money and used it to cover losses that he had made while investing in the stock of an American business. Details are sketchy and the name of the advisor is also a secret that the court is keeping. Credit Suisse told Reuters that it was co-operating with the Geneva prosecutor and added: "We can't comment on the filing and co-operate with the Geneva prosecutor,"

The RM has been detained. The Bloomberg news service believes him to be a Frenchman who worked in Geneva. He allegedly conducted 'improper trading' in 2007 and afterwards. His skulduggery came to light in September, although the means of his unmasking are as yet unknown. The PEP's lawyers have already lodged three 'criminal complaints' on the matter, but this is the first against the bank.

Credit Suisse, for its part, went into overdrive when Ivanishvili's lawyers made their first complaint against the RM on 21 December by lodging its own complaint against him. The bank was posing as an aggrieved party itself, strenuously denying that it had anything to do with him and that he was a 'lone wolf.' The Ivanishvili camp is not buying this, pointing apparently to evidence from hearings and a dossier that it has obtained from Switzerland’s Money-Laundering Reporting Office as proof that money-laundering took place a good deal there, that RMs were allowed to do as they liked, and that there was systemic AML neglect on the part of the compliance people.

The complaint was presumably lodged under Article 141 of the Swiss Criminal Code, which states that any person who for his own or another's benefit unlawfully uses financial assets that have inadvertently come into his possession is liable on complaint to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty.   Any person who commits a felony or misdemeanour in Switzerland is subject to that code and Article 30 says that some acts are only liable to prosecution if a complaint is lodged and that anyone who suffers harm from the suspect's act can lodge one. It goes on to say that if the person who suffered such harm does not have the legal capacity to act, his legal representative is entitled to file a complaint and that appears to be what has happened here, although the reason for Ivanishvili not being legally capable to do it himself is unknown. According to Article 31 the right to lodge a complaint expires after three months. The period begins on the day that the person entitled to file a complaint discovers the identity of suspect. The eventual number of suspects may widen as, according to Article 32, if an entitled person makes a complaint against one person who participated in the act, all the participants become liable to prosecution.

In the Anglo-Saxon legal system, the nearest thing to a criminal complaint is probably a complaint warrant, although it is used in radically different cases. A US lawyer explained to Compliance Matters: "To charge someone, it's usually either a Grand Jury indictment or a criminal information. There is a third way, though: a complaint warrant. It's usually for an on-the-spot crime, like a bank robbery. An agent who makes the arrest files a complaint (basically an affidavit) asking for an arrest warrant. That gets filed with the clerk of the court as a 'complaint warrant.' Then they hold the criminal and the government has 30 days to go before a Grand Jury – either with an indictment or an information."