BSI: Alarming Quarrels
Paolo Fusi
Some clients have sued Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI) for damages. Others raise the specter of fraud, even of backhanded interventions by foreign powers. In the event of a negative outcome of related proceedings, some observers see not only this bank at risk, but the Swiss financial market place as a whole to suffer. Not surprisingly, the BSI has persistently denied all charges, defending its positions even aggressively. Yet, at least one former Swiss lawmaker is not happy with some of his former federal colleagues. Because they seem either unwilling or unable to address in a proper and timely fashion what he considers to constitute serious shortcomings in both the internal and the external controls of this internationally active Swiss bank. And because not more sheepish, ill-considered and back-firing bending to foreign pressures and market-strangulating rules, but rather more encouragement and enforcement of time-tested market principles, banking practices and prompt identification and resolution of banking deficiencies are needed in order to effectively protect the consumers and the financial market.
The Lugano-based bank faces unreported damage claims (www.solami.com/kamel5.doc ¦ www.solami.com/tozzini.htm ¦ www.solami.com/inchiesta.doc). Experts point to avoidable risks entailed in dragged-out proceedings and expect particularly the Federal Banking Commission FBC to intervene.
Is the management of Banca della Svizzera Italiana acting in line with Switzerland's obliging banking traditions? Is BSI a reliable and safe partner for both its clients and its shareholders? Does the Federal Banking Commission correctly carry out its task of controlling the activity of BSI? And is the Swiss taxpayer thus spared the burden of civil responsibility for damages made even bigger by a deficient official banking surveillance?
Unfortunately, as by-standers, we cannot at present answer affirmatively to any one of these questions. We only see signs that the BSI finds itself at the center of a growing controversy. Mismanagement, neglect of fiduciary duties and abuse of confidence are some of the charges which damaged clients have levelled against this venerable Ticinese bank - over the past years and mostly out of the public eye. The respective court cases evolve in the protective shadow of what has all the hallmarks of conveniently and artificially drawn-out civil proceedings. In Geneva, the investigating judge Christine Junod has been looking, since 1999, at the still unexplained and hugely damaging "disappearance" of assets which were placed in BSI custody before 1991. And she is still pondering whether to bring criminal charges against some by-now former BSI officials. Yet, for reasons of state, she may never do that. For the "disappeared" assets include super-sensitive computer tapes on high-resolution airial mapping and geological surveys based on technologies which proved their value in recent wars.
Still, the Federal Banking Commission continues to let the public believe everything to be in line with the law, strictly speaking. Regardless of long-standing claims to the contrary of which it has been informed at least since 1998. And regardless of recent bad experiences with colorblind faith in formalistic approaches which charaterize the surveillance practices underlying the Arthur Andersen, ENRON, Parmalat, Worldcom, and similar cases. Thus, not only could the taxpayer be called upon to foot some of the damage bills, but some of the damage claims are so high that BSI, in the event, may not survive without massive support from its shareholders.
According to documents at hand, BSI is currently fighting off significant damage claims in several civil proceedings. The open proceedings are in Lugano, Geneva, Nassau (Bahamas), Montevideo (Uruguay) and in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The Federal Banking Commission and, more recently, even the Federal Council have again been alerted to these cases. Referring to the BSI cases in particular, a federal lawmaker, Nationalrat Jean Spielmann, broke the story with his parliamentary intervention 03.1085 of 19 June 2003 on the adequacy of Swiss banking surveillance. Specifically, Spielmann has raised the following questions:
"1. Is it true that Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI) has breached its statutory duty of being run by an irreproachable management, for several years and without being discovered as such, as evidenced in several court proceedings?"Spielmann refers to various cases involving allegedly unsavory BSI officials or practices which caused clients and the Swiss banking community to sustain damages. The so-called Pizza Connection of the eighties is a case in point. As the Wall Street Journal reported in a stunning series on the Mafia, the then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani had assembled evidence of the BSI branches in Nassau and Mendrisio to have been involved for years in a huge money-laundering scheme operated by the Sicilian Mafia ("Organization Men: How Banks Often Help the Mafia Turn Ill-Gotten Profits Into 'Legitimate' Holdings", Roger Cohen, WSJ, 15 February 1985). In another case of dubious banking practices - this one brought to light by the Italian Mani Puliti, i.e. "Clean Hand Judges" - numbered BSI accounts were used for illicit payments to Italian political parties, according to the confessions of a manager of the Montedison group. In all of this, and except for responses to foreign pressures, the Federal Banking Commission is not seen to have paid attention or made a dent on these and other damage-prone practices for which Banca della Svizzera Italiana in particular has gained notoriety. Not surprisingly then, the Federal Council answered on 10 September 2003 with a straight face:
"1. The Federal Council and the FBC have no knowledge of cases where a court has found the Banca della Svizzera Italiana to have violated its obligation to conduct its affairs in an irreproachable manner. The FBC is informed that the bank has been engaged for years in civil litigations involving a person residing in the Canton of Geneva, as well as firms controlled by that person."Involving formal reporting requirements, Spielmann's second question narrowed the FBC's options for wiggling itself out of a tight spot on formalities:
"2. Is it true that BSI has changed hands several times without, in its official statements, having divulged self-incurred liabilities amounting to several hundred million Swiss francs, and that similar to the case of dormant accounts dating from the time of the 2nd world war BSI has pursued a practice of geriatric problem-solving, rather than a prompt and extra-judicial damage settlement corresponding to the reputation of the Swiss financial market?"In the seventies, some Swiss financiers bought a controlling stake in BSI. On that and later occasions of ownership changes, some observers had voiced concerns about allegedly "polished accounts." By way of other Swiss banks, i.e. Unigestion of Geneva and the Swiss Banking Corporation SBS, control of BSI finally went back into Italian hands, Trieste Assicurazioni Generali, when the Federal Competition Commission forced its sale as a condition for its approval of the 1998 SBS/UBS mega merger. According to UBS shareholders opposed to that merger, the true valuation of BSI was kept secret even upon challenges at the merger shareholder meetings. Thus, neither its old nor its new owners were given the legally required information that BSI, at that time already, had long-running court cases pending which exposed the bank to substantial litigation risks. Later, Antoine Bernheim, a spokesman for the new owner Generali, confirmed that during the negotiations for its acquisition of BSI, no consideration was given to the need to provide for current litigation risks on that scale. And the Federal Banking Commission, for reasons of its own, is understood to have been kept in the dark as well during all related hand changes it was required by law to examine and approve. Thus caught flat-footed, the FBC, tellingly, even managed to get its nominal superior to sign on the dotted line the following evasive see-nothing, hear-nothing, smell-nothing answer to its inquiring lawmaker:
"2. Neither the Federal Council nor the Federal Banking Commission is aware of cases where BSI unduly failed to mention 'self-incurred liabilities' in the reports it submitted on the occasion of ownership changes. It is neither the duty of the FBC, nor is it part of its competences, to prescribe to the institutions under its control how to resolve civil litigations."Thus, we come to what may be the core of Spielmann's outstanding charges:
"3. Is it true that in the BSI case, too the Federal Banking Commission has begun licence examinations and corrective measures not on the basis of examination of documents in its possession, but only after several years of neglect of serious indications of wrongdoings, and under the pressure of advanced civil and criminal court procedures in Switzerland and abroad as well as under the threat of U.S. Patriot Act sanctions?"To which the Swiss Government - nota bene on the background of public concerns accentuated by the ENRON, Parmalat and other cases - answered with a deafening silence. Firstly, on what's really going on at the FBC. And secondly, on the implications of BSI's belated scrambling which is understood to currently take place in Lugano, Geneva, Bahamas, Tanzania, Brazil and elsewhere:
"3. The FBC fulfills its mandate according to the law and in line with its best knowledge and a clear conscience. Receiving complaints from clients of individual institutes constitutes a part of its work. The FBC examines such complaints with an eye on violations of surveillance rules and regulations. In the case at hand, no facts have been establised which fall into the purview of banking surveillance. Moreover, reference is to be made to the FBC's official secrecy obligations."
Iconoclast Comments
As the law and the available documents suggest, the Federal Banking Commission has or should indeed have been aware of such generally harmful practices which Spielmann rightly denounced as geriatric problem-solving. Having for years observed at close range, and having been formally alerted to what's going on at BSI, there can indeed be no escaping or hiding from the question: Why did the FBC not intervene so far more effectively? Is it because the cases which have come to light are considered to be too small (involving "only" already damage-weakened clients)? Or, on the contrary, because some of these BSI cases forebode even bigger problems ahead, similar to the proverbial tip of the iceberg? Have foreign regulatory authorities, notably the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, not - yet - shown an interest in the matter? The cases of the Nazi gold, those of the dormant accounts from the Second World War period, those evolving under the heading of apartheid claims, those involving what's called "politically exposed persons", and others are symptomatic - and not encouraging at that. They seem to suggest that currently the Federal Banking Commission's strength lies less in its independence from foreign influences, less in its foresight, and less in its sensitivities to and perception of macro-political realities and opportunities. And this at the very moment when the global economic and political environment visibly degenerates into non-productive, self-rightuous and increasinly parasitic bureaucratic jungles, where the increasingly over-bearing, paralyzing and harmful compliance mode becomes the Leitmotiv of formally sovereign nations and citizens. When entrepreneurship, courage and self-responsibility, when imagination, heeding of time-tested principles and liberated citizens are more then ever called for. And when, instead of hiding behind formalistic excuses for overlooking malpractices, the Federal Banking Commission could and should be in the vanguard of cleaning houses where and when necessary. Moreover, there is work to be done for giving back to our bankers the conditions to protect and serve the homo oeconomicus from all over the world with competence, reliability and trustworthiness. Instead of pushing them - under whatever fashionable pretext - to become agents even of foreign fiscal authorities. Which, in the end, merely amounts to fooling ourselves and others with unhelpful, wasteful and even counter-productive activism, i.e. something even worse than E.F.Schumacher's proverbial "rearranging of the desk chairs on the Titanic."
Suit "A" between the Vatican and Jermini
One of the most important clients who sued la Banca della Svizzera Italiana (Italian Swiss Bank) (BSI) is the group SGI, connected with the Vatican finance.
The group SGI is what remained of the huge holding real estate of the Vatican called "Società generale immobiliare" (The General Company of Real Estate), hidden and re-hidden, mounted and remounted in more than one hundred years of financial history, on the way between the IOR Institution for the religious works, the bank Ambrosiano of Roberto Calvi, the Bank of the Gottardo, the Italian private bank of the Sicilian busybody Michele Sindona and just the BSI.
Between 1990 and 1991, the group SGI was brought under the control of the Opus Dei, a kind of masonry of the Vatican tightly connected with Giovanni Paolo II and called to resolve the problems created by the criminal management of the finances of the Holy Church operated by the ex-president of the IOR Paul Marcinkus. The objective of the group BSI is obviously to get back the money hidden in many companies of mailboxes (about three thousand) spread everywhere in the world. Some of these companies (the SGI of Monrovia, capital of Liberia, the Promotion Investment NV of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles, "la Vimibe Sa" of Caracas and "la Wentworth Sa" of Lugano) at the end of 1992 communicate the BSI about four accounts that belong to these companies (the 40276.0, the 40276.20, the 40106.0 and the 40106.20) remained about 16.7 million dollars to which would be added the interests accrued starting from 1990, seeing that the BSI in that moment ceased counting them.
On 31 March, 1993, the BSI admits that the money is its accounts either in Lugano or in the branch of Nassau. But it does not want to restitute it. In this way explains the fact the lawyer Aldo Foglia, called to represent the clients in the civil process against the BSI.
The bank is represented by the solicitor's office Sganzini and Bernasconi, exactly in the course of the process, opened on 20 June, 1996. In this solicitor's office works Emanuele Stauffer who becomes Procurator General of Ticino in 1998.
"The administrators explains Foglia- gave an immediate confirmation about the existence of balances carried over, but they opposed to restitute them" sustaining that this money had been taken by the BSI in settlement of debts advanced from the group SGI "refusing in the same time to supply proofs about the entity of the estimated assurances".
On the basis of the researches of the Inquiry, the debt advanced by the BSI was about 3.6 million dollars. So, also in the case that this debit was documented, the BSI owes 13.1 million dollars to the group SGI more the interests accrued for more than twelve years of juridical battle. Furthermore, in the documentary material presented by the lawyer Foglia is evicted how the attitude of the BSI towards the mailboxes companies of the group SGI was at least unprejudiced. On this subject, Foglia says: " From a certain point onwards the BSI assumed the administration of the operations and became the point of arrival of an important flow of financial means that the bank directed without noticing that to any body ". The so-called "important flow" is more than the initial 16.7 million dollars. According to the researches of the Inquiry it would be al least 80 million francs.
In 2002, the lawyers of the group SGI discovered that an important part of the administration of the "important flow" of money was carried out by Helios Jermini. This latter became apparently threatened by the lawyers of the group SGI and few days later died. The investigation of the magistracy on the death of Jermini was directed by Emanuele Stauffer who never takes into consideration the documentary material in hand to the Investigation. In this context, some clients of the Bank of the Gottardo denounced the same bank of fraud. The clients were defended by the lawyer Foglia, the Bank of the Gottardo by the solicitor's office Sganzini and by the solicitor of another secret office in Ticino (the Moederle case): Battista Ghiggia.
Suit "B" Ice-cream with the taste of mafia
The Tozzini family is a family of Italian immigrants who in the last hundred years made a fortune in Brazil. Now it is believed that this family has been defrauded by the BSI.
In the nineties, the Tozzini had entrusted the administration of their patrimony to Lucio Azzoni, manager of the Brazilian branch of the Banca della Svizzera Italiana (Italian Swiss Bank) (BSI). The family accuses Azzoni and the BSI that they abstracted unduly at least 2.5 million dollars from their own accounts between the end of 1966 and October 2002.
In front of the protests of the clients the main office of Lugano acknowledged that the activity of Azzoni, the patrimonial administrator of the Italian-Brazilian family has no relation with his activity for the bank.
On 5 September, 2002, the Tozzini preferred a complaint. The Investigation of the Brazilian magistracy (still in course ) leads to amazing and worrying results.
The money that disappeared from the accounts of the family passed nearly exclusively to three companies: La Tansy joint stock company, la Gelateria (ice-cream shop) ltd, and la Lespan joint stock company. These three companies are related not only to Azzoni and to the BSI but also to the Peirano family and to their trust company Finambras Partecipaçoes Limitada.
It is a matter of an Uruguayan family, very famous in South America and tightly connected to the mafia. Jorge Peirano Basso, one of the historic chiefs of the clan, is a partner of Azzoni in the Finambras. The group is under accusation of recycling more than 270 million dollars (probably of mafia origin) and for the fraudulent bankruptcy of the holding Brazilian companies of the group from which 1.1 milliard dollars disappeared.
That the 2.5 million dollars "snatched" from the accounts with the BSI of the Tozzini family by order of Azzoni, finished on the accounts of the companies of a similar person made the Italian-Brazilian family afraid to be involved in the investigation for the recycling conducted by the federal magistracy in Rio de Janeiro. The fact that huge figures ended in the accounts of a company that administrates a shop of ice-cream is inexplicable. Meanwhile, the payments to the Tansy (in November, 1996, in June, 1997, in March, 1998, in July, 1998 and in February, 2002) leave some doubts. The Tansy is the company on which were pointed the eyes of the Brazilian investigators. Nevertheless, the BSI continues to refuse to deal with the Tozzini family. A last meeting for a tentative of conciliation held in Lugano on the 30th of April, 2003 led only to a quarrel. The Banca della Svizzera Italiana (Italian Swiss Bank) (BSI) offered successively a conciliation on the basis of which the Ticinese bank would pay a little more than 100 thousand francs.
Suit "C" The secret of the vanished documents
The most important danger for the BSI comes from judicial confrontation with the Egyptian millionaire Ibrahim Mustafa Kamel. In this affair the bank would lose in the course of 2004, up to 500 million dollars. The trial has been going on for more than ten years, and it seems to be getting near to the terminus, with a disastrous consequence for the Ticinese bank.
Ibrahim Mustafa Kamel is one of the founders of the group DMI of Geneva the holding of the Saudi Royal family, from time immemorial bound tightly with the BSI.
The Egyptian entrepreneur is interested in mining engineering and in topography. In 1983, he entered in the company with a German citizen who developed a revolutionary technique to perform geological and geophysical surveys of big regions that are almost unexplored.
It is a matter of machinery that sends and receives sonic waves from an airplane and estimates the resonance to establish if in the underground there are water, petroleum, diamonds and other minerals. To carry out this work Kamel leaves the DMI and constitutes two new companies: the Dtu Dar Tadine Al Umma Ltd. of Nassau and the Kamel Holdings joint stock company of Geneva. The Dtu takes the 51% of the shares of the Geo-survey International Ltd., the company of the German engineer. This group of companies receives big businesses from Guinea, Tanzania and Uganda, businesses that are carried out with spectacular results, so that the Dtu receives an offer of participation in the profits of the mines that are explored in Tanzania thanks to the work of the new machinery. Everything went well till 1990 when the Dtu received a huge offer of 250 million dollars to analyze the entire coast of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which was a more substantial participation in the profits that would come from the discovered fields. At that moment, the German engineer and the BSI began to row against. A battle rose inside the shareholding of the group that concluded only after six years with the victory of Kamel. But in the same time there were enormous damages. In the first place, the money that Tanzania paid for the executed work (10 million dollars) disappeared, furthermore, the money of the participation in the profits (77 million dollars) all deposited with the Banca della Svizzera Italiana (Italian Swiss Bank) (BSI).
For the ten millions there were also a document for the acknowledgment of the debt: this document was not found, as if it were volatilized.
Also the documents that certify a debt in the favor of the Dtu of 50 million dollars from the Guinean government for the surveys performed in that country, disappeared. Worse still: the very heavy tapes that contain the results of that work, deposited with the branch of the BSI in Geneva disappeared. It is worth the same for the contracts with Saudi Arabia that have been annulled. Kamel must even pay a penalty. The total damage is near 400 million dollars that increase because of the legal interests to more than half billion by the end of 2003.
Actually there are pending proceedings in every place: in Dar-El-Salam, in Nassau, in Geneva. Little by little, Kamel is showing that he has reason, the circle around the BSI tightens always more. The answers of the bank are always more and more puzzled.
During an interrogatory made by the director of the BSI Sanzio Pellanda to the judicial authorities of Geneva on 24 February, 2002, this man admits frankly many times that he nearly does not know any thing about the case: "I turned to the legal service of the BSI" in search of the vanished money and documents, but this office "did not know even if the documentation has ever been sent to the bank". At the end, Pellanda succeeded in reconstituting the following version of the facts: "On 17 January, 1991, Dominique Muller of the international sector of the BSI, delivered by hand, an envelope containing the material, in question, to the lawyer Armando Pedrazzini. When the envelope was opened, the documentation was not found any more ". Pellanda admits that he is desolate:" We dont know what arrived". The magistrate of Geneva who conducted the interrogatory was perplexed. The bank let the people understand that this Mister Muller would hide either the financial documents or the "pizze" with the geological and topographic registrations of Guinea: an enterprise already only for the physical effort difficult to believe. Also more unbelievable is the attitude of the BSI towards an employee that would commit a similar crime. Pellanda says: "No penal action was undertaken after the discovery of the disappearance of the documentation". To the bank remained only the signatures of Muller on the register that would provoke that he took the money and the "tapes": "I don't know why Muller signed these documents " explains Pellanda "but I imagine that perhaps, he had the power to do that. I can only say that this system is common to the BSI.
That must be a sufficient datum to start an inquiry of the Federal Commission of Banks. Muller in the meantime goes undisturbed.: "I don't know why Muller is no longer in he bank. The management never informed me of his resignations".
The interrogatory of Pellanda has an explosive value. The lawyer Pedrazzini is a partner to the solicitors office Tettamanti & Spiess. From 1990 to 1991 the BSI has been sold by Tito Tettamanti to the Genevan financial group Unigestion. Soon, the bank was then resold to the Società di banca Svizzera ( Swiss bank company) that would be merged then with the Ubs. If the administration of the BSI knew the disappearance of patrimonial shares of a client whose value is many hundreds of millions, the fact had to appear in the balances of the bank and the reports of the "due diligence " - a document that describes the real internal situation of an institution and its defects. In 2000, the BSI was sold to the Assicurazioni Generali (General Assurances ). According to internal sources of this institution, confirmed by the Genevan Public Prosecutor, no one notified the new owners about the trials sued by Kamel.
Comment
The banks are in search of clients to be snatched.
Is it possible to trust in the Swiss banks ? I want to say: we entrust them our savings, we pay them the installments of our credits, we give them proxy to pay the rent, the light, the telephone. Of course, we hope to give one of their patrimonial administrators the power to manage our savings in financial operations, to "work" with our accounts.
All that is only possible, having a blind confidence in the Swiss banking system a confidence that the Swiss institutions never knew that they merit, but nevertheless it is inculcated on the Swiss citizens from the birth. Worse still: the Swiss know that their banks manage funds of bloody dictators, recycle the money of the organized crime, finance the traffic of arms and other bad things which the mankind can think of. The Swiss know that and they think that this is the "just" price that has to be paid to allow to the banks to regulate to the Confederation and to its citizens a welfare nearly unequal on the planet.
It is believed that the banks will never betray their Helvetic clients and they don't notice the fact that the banks are not an abstract entity, but a group of persons whose interest are exclusively in their own advantages without looking in face of any body, seeing that Switzerland, for a joke of the history and of the policy, gave to whom works in a bank a blank power to commit any vexation to be an accomplice in any crime.
They didn't notice yet the fact that the Swiss financial market brought in Switzerland, little by little, the corruption, the violence, the structural presence of the organized crime, a new poverty, the total insecurity.
To protect the citizens in this difficult relation of confidence with the banks there are only three institutions: the ordinary magistracy, the Federal Commission of Banks and the Federal Council. But if these three institutes become accomplices of the banks also when they defraud their clients, these institutions search, any how, to hide the truth from the citizens, paying quasi secretly the holes created through injections of public money, how it will be possible to continue to have confidence?
And if abroad, as it happens,years ago, the clients notice that the Swiss banks despoil who entrust them their savings,how to think that the banks can guarantee prosperity to the citizens of the Confederation, if since more than ten years they lose at any closure of balance a new important slice of clients ?.
We have to look only to Ticino: Banca della Svizzera Italiana, Banca del Gottardo, Banca Weisscredit, Credito Svizzero di Chiasso, Interchange Bank, Banca Vallugano, Banca Subalpina, Banca dello Stato..... how many other banks have to finish in a scandle (of course only because of an unfaithful employee) before taking measures?
In theses days there are other Swiss banks in dock in international trials. In Switzerland no body knows any thing about them. In Canada the Leu Bank (group Credit Suisse ) has to answer to an accusation of fraud for more than 30 millions of francs. Always in this country la Cibc (Suisse) of Geneva is under accusation for more than 100 millions. In the United States either the BSI or other banks of the Confederation,in the last months paid penalties by millions to avoid painful public trials.
The Federal Council responds to an interpellation in this subject: it does not interest if the matter concerns only small disputes between banks and clients. And in this question, the fact is silent that not even the 10% of defrauded clients succeed in bringing a legal action against the bank that defrauded them- simply because they have no money to do that. And if that is carried out in the magistracy to protect the citizen, the answer is generally the annihilation of the defrauded client through the indifference, the derisions, the threats, the retaliations.
Dear consumers, you have to wake up, because already it is too late. It's time that some body tell us that the Swiss banks always more and more must defraud their clients because they don't earn enough to extinguish the thirst of the pomp of their own managers. Because of course their own patrimonial administrators lost crazy figures in the casino of the international finance and the commissions of control of the stock exchanges, outside of Switzerland, require that the banks extinguish every
day, their debts even if they are Multimillionaires - contracts on gambling.
The case of the Barings Bank in 1995 shows that clearly: when the patrimonial managers, Friday evening, close the stock-exchange week with a debt of one hundred, two hundred, three hundred or more millions, the week-end they pass it in search of accounts of the clients to be snatched that later they will not have sufficient means to react against the theft.
And no body makes anything. And the press is silent, seeing that it survives, in big parts, thanks to the prebends (today called announcements) of the same banks.
And we, in only one night, lose the savings of the life, and we would be asked to say: thanks!.
Paolo Fusi.
If the bank has problems
it is possible to fleece the client
Always more and more the maneuvers dared by the banks are paid by thirds.
The cases of Swiss banks involved in trials of millions against clients who feel defrauded, rise as the fungus after the storms of the fusions and of the big crisis of the stock-exchange speculations of the end of the nineties.
It is not at all a matter of a Helvetic peculiarity: the necessity to offer to the share-holders greedy dividends, the anxiety that in case of loss of some concurrent starts to rake up shares of a bank in a way strongly reduced, the arrogance and the thirst of proceeds of intermediate panels employed in the stock-exchange (and submitted to insufficient internal control from their institution), lead the banks, big and small, when they find them-selves in difficulty apparently insurmountable, to select the most simple option: snatch the accounts of the clients. If in the United States some banks (BSI included) concluded these affairs in painless way with a bargaining or with the authorities of control or with the clients themselves, in the Swiss territory, the situation is rather alarming.
The four Hail Mary
Exactly in the first days of January, the attorney's office of the canton of Zurich will proceed to the interrogatory of four Swiss managers of the CIBC Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (Suisse) joint stock company of Geneva. At least for one of them the accusation is the fraud, now the investigation includes also the recycling. The other three, now, appear before the Court as witnesses, but the situation would change in unexpected manner: in 1999 the CIBC finished in a crisis of liquidity and sold some of its European branches between them the Swiss one, bought by French people of the VAI Credite Agricole Indosuez. The attorney of Zurich summoned the CIBC and the CAI to deliver all the documentation of the sale suspecting that there are dangerous irregularities. In the same time, some clients in Switzerland of the CIBC are trying in Canada: the post in joke is higher than 500 million dollars a figure that would kneel down the CIBC, that also is one of the biggest 50 banks in the world.
In parallel also, the Leu Bank in the sight of the clients in fierce. Also here, the situation worsens from week to week. The English magistracy that investigates on the CIBC case, discovered that the Leu Bank perhaps participated in a financial operation of the CIBC suspected to be gravely illegal. The English investigation and that Swiss, in the last days of December enlarged also to Germany. Also here the speech is on million dollars vindicated by clients who believe that they are duped, of a figure that, if the bank would restitute it, it would lead the bank to the limit of the bankruptcy. Now, they investigate of the network of mailboxes companies through which the money vanished, they talk about Cayman Islands and other tax heavens, but also about Ticino. In Lugano, nevertheless, on this subject from the magistracy no dossier is open.
Sleeping commission
In the same time the managers of the CIBC and of the Leu Bank involved in these events are discharged. A strange case, nevertheless, one of them took the post of the other and the same solicitor's office of Zurich, that already had accompanied the sale of the branch of Geneva of the CIBC to the CAI, and who defends all the banks and the involved managers. A conflict of interests that would be the object of an accurate investigation from the Federal Commission of Banks. Who knows all and acts as nothing had happened.