Ex-Credit Suisse employee charged with money laundering

Former Credit Suisse employee charged with money laundering Keystone-SDA

A former employee of Credit Suisse has been charged with lending to Mozambican state-owned companies totalling over $2 billion (CHF1.6 billion). Credit Suisse and its successor company UBS are accused of failing to prevent the offence.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) criticised organisational shortcomings in this context on Monday, as detailed in a press release.

The loans were granted by the Credit Suisse Financial Group to three Mozambican state-owned companies in 2013. In 2016, they became known as the “Mozambique debt scandal”. In 2020, the OAG opened initial criminal proceedings in this connection, which it is currently conducting against two people on suspicion of money laundering and aiding and abetting the bribery of foreign public officials.

Based on findings from these first criminal proceedings, the OAG opened a second criminal investigation in 2023, which it has now concluded with the submission of the indictment of November 25, 2025, as detailed in the statement.

+ Where did it all go wrong for Credit Suisse?

Money allegedly obtained through criminal offences

The indictment centres on a business relationship between Credit Suisse and a foreign company that was allegedly active in business consulting and asset management and was presumably involved in the events surrounding the “Mozambique debt scandal”, the OAG reported on Monday.

Funds totalling around $7.86 million were received in the company’s accounts at Credit Suisse in Switzerland in spring 2016, transferred by the Mozambique Ministry of Economy and Finance.

The funds received by Credit Suisse from Mozambique were suspected to have originated from a so-called running fee agreed between the account holder and Mozambican state-owned companies and guaranteed by the state, paid out for alleged services in connection with the aforementioned credit transactions.

According to the indictment, the funds received from Mozambique – the running fee – were obtained or favoured by criminal offences in Mozambique, in particular corruption in the form of bribery of Mozambican public officials and disloyal conduct in Mozambique.

Employee probably in charge of investigations

Shortly after receiving the credit, the account holder transferred $7 million of the funds received to bank accounts in the United Arab Emirates. According to the OAG, Credit Suisse initiated investigations into this business relationship on the basis of this account movement. The accused Credit Suisse compliance employee was presumably in charge of carrying out these investigations.

Although, according to the indictment, she had numerous indications that the funds received from Mozambique might have criminal origins, the compliance employee is said to have recommended to the management of Credit Suisse and Credit Suisse Group not to file a report with the Money Laundering Reporting Office Switzerland (MROS), but rather to net out the business relationship.

In the course of the balancing of accounts, in autumn 2016, the funds originally originating from suspected criminal offences in Mozambique and still remaining at Credit Suisse at that time in the amount of around $609,000 and CHF28,000 were transferred to accounts abroad.

The OAG accuses the compliance employee of having caused or allowed the remaining funds of suspected criminal origin to be moved abroad and thus laundered by recommending the balancing of the business relationship and by carelessly carrying out the money-laundering investigation assigned to her.

Credit Suisse only reported suspected money laundering to MROS in 2019 after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) publicised criminal proceedings in connection with the Mozambique loan transactions.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

How we work 

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]