Credit Suisse tight-lipped over media reports of frozen accounts
Josh O'Neill, Reporter, London, 2 December 2016
The Zurich-headquartered firm has pledged to come clean about secret assets in the face of a crackdown on secret Swiss bank accounts on the part of the US Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service.
Credit Suisse made no comment when asked by WealthBriefing, our sister publication, whether it has frozen dozens of accounts in an attempt to determine whether its clients are hiding money.
The bank is reportedly looking at indicators such as phone numbers or powers of attorney to establish whether Americans are the true owners of accounts not disclosed to the IRS. The report, made to Bloomberg earlier this week, comes from a person close to the matter who was not authorised to speak publicly. This source is claiming that any client activity on these accounts now requires approval by a special group at Credit Suisse.
Dominique Gerster, a spokesperson for Credit Suisse in New York, refused to comment, neither confirming nor rebuking the reports.
The US Department of Justice has been ramping up its investigation into why Credit Suisse failed to notify the authorities that an American client who last month pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the IRS was holding $200 million in assets, according to multiple Bloomberg sources. Credit Suisse is hoping to prove that any hidden accounts represented a “lapse in control” as opposed to a criminal act, another person close to the matter told Bloomberg.
The news may come as unsurprising to some as probes like this one have been conducted by US authorities for some years now.
In 2009, UBS reached a $780 million settlement with the US authorities that immunised it from future criminal and civil charges to do with its provision of offshore accounts for US citizens. The saga fired the starting gun for the US "Swiss banks programme," in which 78 Swiss banks reached similar settlements on pain of losing their US assets and business, and also led to the US Foreign Accouts Tax Compliance Act 2010.
The Department of Justice declined to comment on the matter when contacted by WealthBriefing.
