Credit Suisse Pleads Guilty in Felony Case

Source: New York Times

In a sign that banking giants are no longer immune from criminal charges, despite concerns that financial institutions have grown so large and interconnected that they are too big to jail, federal prosecutors demanded that Credit Suisse’s parent company plead guilty to helping thousands of American account holders hide their wealth.

The rebuke from federal prosecutors as well as from the Federal Reserve and New York’s state banking regulator, Benjamin M. Lawsky, is intended as a blow against overseas tax dodging and the shadowy world of Swiss bank secrecy. The deal also signals a shift in prosecutors’ tactics. It is the most prominent bank to plead guilty in the United States since Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1989, and the largest to do so since the Bankers Trust in 1999, a bank a fraction the size of Credit Suisse.

The plea from Credit Suisse, some three years after federal prosecutors in Virginia indicted eight bank employees, is expected to provide a template for prosecuting other financial misdeeds. BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank, is next in line to plead guilty in the coming weeks, the people briefed on the matter said. The bank, which is suspected of doing business with countries like Sudan that the United States has blacklisted, will also pay more than $5 billion in fines, the people briefed on the matter said.

The BNP and Credit Suisse cases may also lay the groundwork for criminal actions against American banks. While the new strategy applies to American banks like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, those inquiries are at an earlier stage and it is unclear whether they warrant charges.



Read more: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/credit-suisse-set-to-plead-guilty-in-tax-evasion-case/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0