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Swiss prosecutors filed charges Monday against Credit Suisse over what they say were organizational failures that allowed money laundering linked to Mozambique’s “tuna bonds” fraud, which devastated the country’s economy in the 2010s.
The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland said Credit Suisse Group AG and its parent, UBS Group AG, which absorbed the bank in 2023, are being held liable for “organizational deficiencies” that allowed the laundering to occur. Prosecutors also indicted a former Credit Suisse employee for aggravated money laundering.
According to the indictment, the deficiencies enabled more than $2 billion in loans to be issued to three Mozambican state-owned companies between 2013 and 2016, ostensibly for maritime security and tuna fishing projects. Prosecutors said a 2016 transfer of about $7.86 million from Mozambique’s Ministry of Economy into a Credit Suisse account should have triggered red flags, but the bank failed to report it and later allowed most of the money to be moved to accounts in the United Arab Emirates.
Prosecutors said the funds were allegedly derived from corruption and other criminal conduct in Mozambique, and that Credit Suisse’s internal controls, risk-management systems and compliance procedures were flawed, enabling the transfers to proceed.
The scandal sparked years of litigation in the U.S., U.K. and South Africa involving Mozambique’s former finance minister, Manuel Chang; executives of the state-owned companies; several Credit Suisse bankers; and the Lebanese shipbuilder Privinvest.
Chang was sentenced in January to eight and a half years in a U.S. federal prison for his role in the $2 billion fraud.
Authorities uncovered the scheme in 2016, by which time Mozambique had already defaulted on more than $700 million in debt obligations, driving inflation higher and plunging the country into crisis. A report by Mozambique’s Center for Public Integrity said the fallout pushed at least 1.9 million people below the consumption-based poverty line by 2019, marking the largest increase in the country’s history.
The latest charges add to Credit Suisse’s widening legal troubles. In May, the bank agreed to pay nearly $511 million to settle a U.S. criminal case accusing it of helping wealthy American clients evade taxes. In 2022, it agreed to pay $495 million to resolve claims that it misled investors about the risks of mortgage-backed securities ahead of the 2008 financial crisis.
