Credit Suisse Hit With Laundering Charges in Mozambique Case

(Bloomberg) — Swiss prosecutors charged Credit Suisse with failing to prevent suspected money laundering of suspicious service fees linked to loans the lender offered Mozambique to build a fishing fleet in what became the tuna-bond scandal.

Credit Suisse and its now parent company UBS Group AG have been charged “with not taking all the required and reasonable organizational measures in the relevant period in 2016 to prevent the money laundering that was allegedly committed,” the Office of the Attorney-General of Switzerland said in a press release on Monday.

Under Swiss law, a company can be criminally charged for failing to prevent crimes such as money-laundering. Swiss prosecutors have used that clause with growing success in recent years. Oil trader Trafigura was convicted for failing to prevent bribery by a former executive in early 2025.

Credit Suisse itself was found guilty for failing to prevent the laundering of proceeds from cocaine trafficking in 2022, before that conviction was overturned on a technicality last year. That case, like the Mozambique scandal was one of many that engulfed the Swiss bank over the past decade, driving away investors and contributed to its near collapse and rescue by UBS in 2023.

“We firmly reject the Office of the Attorney General’s conclusions and will vigorously defend our position,” UBS said in a statement on Monday.

A conviction for failing to flag money-laundering to authorities can lead to a prison sentence of up to one year for a person, and a fine of up to 5 million Swiss francs ($6.2 million) for a company.

UBS in 2023 reached a settlement with Mozambique over Credit Suisse’s role in the ship-financing scandal. That agreement brought to a close a case that began a decade ago when Credit Suisse first financed the construction of a new coastal patrol force and tuna fishing fleet for Mozambique. The African nation alleges the Swiss bank ignored red flags and the corruption of its own bankers in deals struck as part of $2 billion worth of bond deals.

Credit Suisse agreed in 2021 to pay almost $475 million to resolve multiple investigations around the world into its role in the scandal, which saw hundreds of millions looted from Mozambique and tipped the country into economic crisis.

The federal Swiss prosecutors on also filed an indictment against an unnamed former Credit Suisse employee, and dropped an investigation into a second ex-staffer.

The employee charged was a compliance officer at the bank, according to the prosecutors. They appeared to be aware that so-called “running fees” paid from Mozambique into Credit Suisse accounts in Switzerland could be “of felonious origin” linked to probable bribes, according to the indictment.

But rather than filing a suspicious activity report to the Money Laundering Reporting Office of Switzerland, they chose to terminate the commercial relationship, prosecutors said. It was not until 2019 that Credit Suisse filed a report after the US Department of Justice announced it was conducting criminal proceedings into the scandal.

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