The statute of limitations for prosecuting suspected money laundering is seven years, or 15 years for aggravated money laundering, and the bank’s court lawyers are expected to challenge the right of prosecutors to include evidence before 2007.
The bank has said it hired independent experts in 2016 to assess its compliance set-up and that it was deemed to be correct and appropriate at the time. Credit Suisse lawyers will likely also press prosecutors to prove that its handling of the transactions violated rules in place over 15 years ago.
Cocaine Balls
The case dates to 2008 when prosecutors opened a probe into a Bulgarian wrestler whose training funding had dried up after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, fell in with a mafia clan and had turned to drug trafficking to make cash.
From 2002 to 2012, he organized the import of tens of tonnes of cocaine into Europe, using boats, planes and drug mules willing to swallow cocaine-packed rubber balls. He was sentenced to a 20-year prison sentence in Italy in 2017, and also convicted by courts in Romania and Bulgaria.
Two of his associates are also on trial at the federal criminal court in Bellinzona, accused of participation in organized crime and aggravated money laundering. A lawyer for the first declined to comment and a lawyer for the second didn’t return a message seeking a response.
E. actively assisted the drug ring to launder 16 million francs and, overall, helped obscure the illicit origins of transactions worth more than 140 million Swiss francs, according to the prosecutors.
If convicted E. could face up to five years in prison. But for Credit Suisse, any potential penalties would be lower in Switzerland than other jurisdictions such as the U.S. If found guilty, the bank risks a maximum fine of just 5 million francs.
—With assistance from Marion Halftermeyer.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.