The French unit of UBS was also found guilty, as well as four former bankers who were defendants in the case. The Paris court of appeals reversed the conviction of Hervé d’Halluin, an ex-banker at UBS France. Paris judges also confirmed the 2019 acquittal of the highest-profile banker in the case, Raoul Weil, who formerly headed UBS’s wealth-management unit.
All six bankers had previously denied any wrongdoing.
Monday’s outcome is a setback for prosecutors at the Parquet National Financier who brought the case and may make other companies think twice before seeking to settle investigations.
In the UBS case, the Swiss lender eschewed a settlement in 2017 after failing to agree on an amount, exposing it to in-court demands from the state and prosecutors.
At the time, UBS started by offering 180 million euros, less than a fifth of the 1.1 billion-euro bond it had to post in the case. As French enforcers dismissed the UBS offer, which it had improved slightly, as unacceptable, the bank’s legal team decided to play hardball, pushing the case to trial in the hope of wringing out a smaller penalty.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.