The leaked data includes information about more than 18,000 Credit Suisse accounts and 30,000 account holders. (Some clients hold multiple accounts, while many accounts are controlled by multiple clients.)
The total amount of money held in the accounts at their maximum was more than US$100 billion.
One example is Rodoljub Radulović , a high-ranking member of one of Eastern Europe’s largest cocaine-smuggling cartels, led by the notorious Serbian drug lord Darko Sarić. Radulović was able to open a Credit Suisse account despite a long history of involvement in financial scandals in the United States. He then used it to launder over 3 million euros’ worth of drug money, Serbian prosecutors say.
'Most' of this stuff seems historical but none of it surprises me. Back in the older-but-not-that-long-ago days account managers and their direct superiors were seemingly almost a law unto themselves and operated with much less central oversight and governance than they do now and were open to influence and corruption. Clearly they still have some work to do to stamp this out, same with the other major global banks, but man it must be touch to catch every account that is opened with your bank and used to launder cash, when the majority of account openers are, on the surface, 'legitimate'. For those that are obviously accounts of named people that should be blacklisted, there is no excuse and they should be penalized.
Swiss goody two shoes caught with their pants down? Did you miss the whole FATCA nuking swiss banking secrecy thing due to the banks willingly aiding tax evasion for decades?
None of that stuff was really surprising, but get it spelled out is still interesting.
1. Swiss newspapers did not participate in this leak. Tamedia is normally part of the network which did the leak (including Guardian, Sueddeutsche and others). They didnt because writing about Swiss bank secrets would be illegal here. Apparently is the banking secret of criminals and dictators valued higher than press freedom by Swiss courts.
2. The simple fact that historic data of 18k accounts was leaked is a much bigger topic. Thats a breach of trust from a major Swiss bank that has not happened before...
No idea what you are taking, nor implying (nb: if this addressed to me, am certainly no Serbian).
Saric originates in Montenegro and his ethnic roots are all Montenegrin. His primary nationality, stemming from Yugoslav days is Montenegrin/i..e registered in the citizenship records of Montenegro.
He did acquire Serbian citizenship, as well as Slovak.
But don't think acquiring a citizenship makes him neither Serbian nor Slovak.
Talking to UBS-staffers who have been there a bit longer (which seems to be getting more difficult every day), it seems that large parts of the jobs of South-America desk employees was to collect dope-money and credit it to the Swiss bank accounts of the involved drug-lords.
In my cynical view of the world, this would not have been allowed by the US for so long, if there wasn't a large caste of politically connected organizations and individuals drawing huge profits (and thus influence) from these operations.
Among other things, intelligence organizations likely used Swiss banks themselves to move around cash for various operations.
Sort of. If you are born in the US, you are a citizen (and taxpayer) whether you like it or not, or even whether you know it or not. "Secret Americans" are quite common among the children of Europeans who went and lived in the US for a brief period in their 20s. Their birth in the US makes them a citizen, but often this idiosyncrasy of US law goes unnoticed by short-term residents because "home" doesn't work this way. Johnson was a secret US Citizen for many years, but eventually someone noticed and he quietly went through the renunciation process when he was Foreign Secretary a few years ago.
On the other hand, Winston Churchill was half-American because of his mother, Jenny Jerome, but never claimed it. Because he was not born in the US and because he was born before FATCA, nobody cared back then.
"Likely" is out of the window... Omar Suleiman - former head of the Egyptian secret service - and Akhtar Abdul Rahman - former head of the rather notorious Pakistani ISI are directly identified in this leak...
Excuse me mister, have you been switzerlanded so hardly that you export the discussion about "Terzos having swiss passports are not real swiss people"?
If one has Serbian citizenship, or Italian or Ugandese, is then a Serb, an Italian, an Ugandian.
If you do not find it ethical pure enough, you can always go and complain with the Serbian/Italian/Ugandian parliament for their lack of moral in giving out sacred citizenships ...
Just these 2 names mean a lot of blood, suffering and murders of innocents also on the hands of CS now... nothing to be proud to work there these days, really
Sure - maybe you can explain to the British press that these are not Albanian but British drug lords...
Blood feud behind bars: Two ruthless Albanian gangsters, a £20m cocaine deal gone wrong and a vicious kidnapping and revenge killing - all while both were in jail
His other four brothers headed for the UK, where they eventually gained British citizenship.