Credit Suisse Pension Waiver Should Be Denied, Waters Says
(Bloomberg) — Credit Suisse Group AG’s bid to continue managing U.S. pensions after its conviction for helping American clients evade taxes should be rejected by the Labor Department unless the bank improves controls against wrongdoing, according to Representative Maxine Waters.
Waters, a California Democrat, sent a letter to Labor Secretary Thomas Perez today ahead of an agency hearing on Credit Suisse’s status as a pension manager, which Waters and two colleagues had pressed the department to hold.
“I believe that at this point, the waiver should be denied given the lack of important public facts and the insufficient proposed conditions,” Waters wrote. If regulators continue to routinely approve waivers, they will be “throwing away valuable enforcement tools and enshrining a policy of too-big-to-bar.”
Unless Labor grants a waiver, the Swiss bank will be disqualified from handling U.S. pension funds following its guilty plea last year to helping thousands of Americans evade U.S. taxes. Credit Suisse oversees billions of dollars of assets for more than 100 U.S. pension plans, according to a July court filing. The bank hasn’t disclosed any details about the value or the structure of its U.S. pension management business.
Justin Perras, a Credit Suisse spokesman, declined to comment on the letter. Michael Trupo, a spokesman for the Labor Department, wasn’t immediately able to comment.
The Labor Department’s designation of a bank as a so-called Qualified Professional Asset Manager is supposed to be “reserved for those financial institutions that ‘maintain a high standard of integrity,’” said Waters. She urged the department to weigh Credit Suisse’s “recidivist history” in deciding whether to grant the waiver, noting that the bank entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department in 2009 for U.S. sanctions violations.
The department, which has asked the bank to hire an independent monitor, should require Credit Suisse to disclose more information about its pension units and bar any employees who have been involved in wrongdoing elsewhere.
“Such a restriction would assure our nation’s retirees that those involved in Credit Suisse’s decades-long scheme to assist thousands of Americans evade taxes will not be involved in directing their securities in risky, conflict-ridden transactions” involving their pensions, the letter said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Neil Weinberg in New York at nweinberg2@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net Gregory Mott
