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A Swiss court has handed Pierre Mirabaud, a former president of the Swiss Bankers Association and former partner at the private bank Mirabaud & Cie, a two-year suspended prison sentence after finding him guilty of foreign bribery and money laundering.
The Swiss Federal Criminal Court delivered its verdict late Tuesday morning, state broadcaster SRF reported.
According to the indictment, the 78-year-old former banker "continuously and systematically" funneled nearly 300 payments totaling 82.3 million Swiss francs ($101.7 million) to a senior Kuwaiti government official between 2000 and 2012. In exchange, the Kuwaiti official allegedly invested $595.2 million with the Geneva-based private bank.
Mirabaud, who chaired the Swiss Bankers Association from 2003 to 2009, pleaded guilty to making the illicit payments and admitted to his role in the corruption and money-laundering scheme.
During the hearing, Mirabaud expressed remorse. “I am here to take responsibility; that's why I accepted this procedure,” he said, according to public broadcaster RTS.
In an email to OCCRP, Mirabaud's attorney, Saverio Lembo, said his client had “fully cooperated with the judicial authorities” since the investigation began in 2012.
“Today he accepts responsibility for his actions, in accordance with the principles of individual responsibility, to which he has always been deeply committed,” Lembo wrote.
The Kuwaiti official, Fahad Al-Rajaan, who served as director general of Kuwait's Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSSI) from 1984 to 2012, was convicted in absentia in Kuwait in 2015 for corruption and embezzlement. He died in London in 2022.
