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Swiss Bank Credit Suisse Hit with Historic Money Laundering Conviction Related to Cocaine Trafficking

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/credit-suisse-plans-appeal-money-laundering-verdict-2022-06-27/

Excerpt:

Credit Suisse was convicted by Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court on Monday of failing to prevent money laundering by a Bulgarian cocaine trafficking gang in the country’s first criminal trial of one of its major banks.

A former employee was found guilty of money laundering in the trial, which included testimony on murders and cash stuffed into suitcases and is seen as a test case for prosecutors taking a tougher line against the country’s banks.

The ruling marks another headache for Switzerland’s second-biggest bank, which has been reeling from billions in losses racked up via risk-management and compliance blunders. Federal prosecutor Alice de Chambrier welcomed the verdict as “good for transparency”. Both Credit Suisse and the former employee had denied wrongdoing. Credit Suisse said it would appeal against the conviction. read more

The judges looked at whether Credit Suisse and the former employee did enough to prevent the cocaine trafficking gang from laundering profits through the bank from 2004 to 2008. The court said on Monday it found deficiencies within Credit Suisse both with regard to the management of client relations with the criminal organization and with regard to the monitoring of the implementation of anti-money laundering rules.

“These deficiencies enabled the withdrawal of the criminal organization’s assets, which was the basis for the conviction of the bank’s former employee for qualified money laundering,” the court said. “The company could have prevented the infringement if it had fulfilled its organizational obligations,” the presiding judge said in handing down the verdict, adding that the former employee’s superiors had been “passive”. Credit Suisse said the case arose from an investigation that dated back more than 14 years. “Credit Suisse is continuously testing its anti-money laundering framework and has been strengthening it over time, in accordance with evolving regulatory standards,” the bank said.

Credit Suisse was fined 2 million Swiss francs ($2.1 million). The court also ordered the confiscation of assets worth more than 12 million francs that the drug gang held in accounts at Credit Suisse, and ordered the bank to relinquish more than 19 million francs — the amount that could not be confiscated due to internal deficiencies at Credit Suisse. ($1 = 0.9594 Swiss francs)

The court handed the former employee, who cannot be named under Swiss privacy laws, a suspended 20-month prison sentence and a fine for money laundering. The presiding judge said she had failed to fulfill her role in the bank’s “first line of defense”.

The former banker’s attorney said she would appeal against the “unfounded and unfair decision”, noting she had not made any financial gain. “This judgment places the responsibility for money laundering on people without any serious training or experience,” her attorney said. Credit Suisse shares closed up 0.4%, while the European banking sector index (.SX7P) rose 0.3%. They are down more than 40% in the past year, having faced several scandals and loan defaults in the last few years.

Bulgarian Cocaine Trafficking Gang

Credit Suisse and one of its former employees faced charges of allowing an alleged Bulgarian cocaine trafficking gang to launder millions of Euros, some of it in used banknotes stuffed into suitcases. Credit Suisse learned of murders and cocaine smuggling allegedly connected to a Bulgarian gang but continued to manage cash, a banker convicted of money laundering told a Swiss court during the case.

The bank and the accused banker denied any wrongdoing. The indictment centered on relationships that Credit Suisse and its ex-employee had with former Bulgarian wrestler Evelin Banev and multiple associates, two of whom were also charged in the case.

The female banker, who is accused of helping conceal the criminal origins of the money through more than 146 million Swiss francs in transactions, appeared in the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona in southern Switzerland along with her managers who gave evidence. The events unfolded between 2004 and 2008.

A Credit Suisse spokesperson said the bank has rejected all allegations and that it was convinced its former employee was innocent. Credit Suisse disputes the illegal origin of the money, a source familiar with its thinking has told Reuters, saying that Banev and his circle operated legitimate businesses in construction, leasing, and hotels.

Banev is not facing charges in Switzerland but was convicted in Italy of drug trafficking in 2017 and in Bulgaria in 2018 for money laundering. He was arrested in September in Ukraine as countries including Bulgaria and Romania sought his arrest. In Sofia, his attorney said last week that Banev denied any involvement in laundering money from drug trafficking through Credit Suisse.

Bank Management Allegedly Learned of Murders Early On

The former Credit Suisse banker whose identity cannot be reported under Swiss privacy rules said she told her managers of events, including two murders, but that they decided to pursue the business nonetheless.

In an email from June 2005 read out in court, a Credit Suisse banker played down press reports linking the murder of one of Banev’s associates a month earlier with drug trafficking. “After the homicide, we have decided to continue the business relationships,” the banker wrote in the email. “The said (short and imprecise) article linking the murder to Spanish cocaine...has not been confirmed.”

Roughly two years later, the victim’s mother was also murdered shortly before she was due to give a statement as part of an investigation into Banev, the female banker later told the court, prompting her to raise the matter with her managers.

Banev, whose lawyer declined to comment further on Thursday, was in custody at the time, charged with participating in an organized crime group that aimed to launder money.

“The reaction I received when talking with my hierarchy, the questions were: was the person killed a bank client? No, she was not,” the banker told the court. “Is she in any way linked to the bank, do you know her?” she said, recalling the conversation. “I said: ‘No, never met her’. And then the reaction was, well then what is your problem?”

The court heard that the banker received bonuses of 122,000 Swiss francs in 2006 and 180,000 francs in both 2007 and 2008.

Taking the stand to give evidence, the banker’s managers said this week they could recall little of events at the time and said they had trusted the matter to the bank’s legal and compliance department in line with internal rules regarding funds under investigation.

“The whole process is with legal and compliance,” one of the banker’s former managers told the court. “The relationship manager is asked not to inform colleagues when legal and compliance considers it important to inform different hierarchy, then they do it.”

Switzerland’s second-biggest bank, when asked for comment, reiterated that it rejected all the allegations as meritless and said there was no wrongdoing by its former employee. The case was being followed closely in Switzerland, where it is seen as a test for prosecutors to take a potentially tougher line against the country’s banks.

Corruption and money laundering experts said the fact that Switzerland had taken legal action against a global banking player like Credit Suisse could send a powerful message in a country famous for its banking industry.
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And Swiss banks were neutral during WWII and knew nothing of Nazi assets passing through their institutions./s

Swiss banks IMO have a made up reputation due to the influence of Zurich and the banks wealthy clientele.

Are Swiss banks another WEF Davos group shattering when sunlight is on them?

Detail Information on the Arrests Made in Connection to the Deaths of the 51 Illegal Immigrants Found in a Cloned Semi-Track Trailer in San Antonio

https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Truck-dead-immigrants-San-Antonio-17270944.php

Excerpt:

Federal authorities arrested three people Tuesday in connection with a human smuggling incident on San Antonio’s Southwest Side that left 51 migrants dead after a harrowing journey in a sweltering tractor-trailer. It was one of the deadliest such episodes in recent history.

The alleged driver, Homero Zamorano, 45, was arrested after officials say he abandoned the tractor-trailer in a desolate area near Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland and fled the scene. Zamorano has addresses in Houston and the Rio Grande Valley.

“He was very high on meth when he was arrested nearby and had to be taken to the hospital,” a law enforcement officer said.

After arresting Zamorano, authorities traced the semi-truck to a home in the 100 block of Arnold in Bexar County. They put the house under surveillance and saw two men — Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao and Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendez — leaving in a Ford F150 truck, sources said.

When authorities stopped the truck, one of the men confessed to having a weapon in the vehicle. Officers obtained a search warrant and searched the home on Arnold, where they found more guns, according to court records. The two men were arrested on suspicion of possessing firearms while in the country illegally. They were detained without bail after a brief hearing in federal court.

Truck’s Route

According to two law enforcement officials, the truck traveled from Laredo up Interstate 35 to San Antonio. With Interstate 10 running east to west and Interstate 35 south to north, San Antonio is a major crossroad for human smuggling. Along that route, the truck passed through several border and immigration checkpoints where it was seen on surveillance cameras showing the driver, Homero Zamorano who was captured after the abandoned truck was discovered. The truck’s driver, Homero Zamorano may appear Wednesday in federal court on human smuggling charges. He has a long criminal history. He was high on meth at the time and taken to the hospital for treatment.

Migrant’s Covered in Steak Seasoning

The truck may have been carrying around 100 migrants, but the exact number remained unclear, according to local and federal law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation.

It appeared the migrants had recently crossed the border and were picked up by the truck to be taken to where they would work, according to a Mexican official, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official, and another U.S. official, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss the matter.

Craig Larrabee, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio, said the death toll from Monday’s human smuggling incident makes it “the worst one we’ve seen in the U.S.”

“The (human smuggling) organizations are getting more violent — they don’t care about the people,” he said. “They don’t think of them as people. They think of them as commodities.”

In other developments, many of the people found inside the truck were covered in steak seasoning, one law enforcement official said Tuesday, likely in an effort to disguise their scent as the smugglers were transporting them.

Timothy Tubbs, who retired as the deputy special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Laredo, said smugglers commonly use seasonings to aid their smuggling operations.

“Dogs are trained for several things. Some are trained to smell money. Some are trained to smell narcotics and weapons, and some dogs are trained to smell human beings,” Tubbs said. “They will put seasoning on them to cover their scent so they can get through the Border Patrol checkpoint.”
Law enforcement officials said after being covered in the meat seasoning they were stuffed into a truck’s trailer that had been “cloned” to look like a legitimate truck.

Cloned Commercial Truck Used

The Volvo truck, a red tractor unit with a large white trailer, was found around 5:50 p.m. Monday after nearby workers heard cries for help and walked over to the tractor-trailer to investigate.

One person was outside the trailer, lying on the ground. The workers opened the doors and discovered dozens of stacked bodies inside, officials said. The semi-truck was first linked to an Alamo man, but an investigation revealed the smugglers had cloned that Texan’s license plate and registration.

‘His DOT Number was illegally copied onto the truck...’ Isaac Limon, whose father-in-law’s vehicle information had been stolen. ‘It was a perfect setup.’ The truck that actually belonged to Limon’s family had been out hauling grain in another part of Texas at the time of the incident.

The truck, which was traced to a trucking company based in the border town of Alamo, TX had actually been cloned, the company owners said. Human smuggling groups and cartels often replicate legitimate vehicles to use in illegal border crossings going so far as to create fake school buses with mannequins standing in as passengers.

The owners of Betancourt Trucking and Harvesting, Felipe Betancourt Sr. and his son, Felipe Jr. said someone cloned their truck, with the same color and identifying numbers from the federal Department of Transportation and the Texas Department of Transportation. However, the cloned truck does not bear the Betancourt logo, like their company vehicles do.

“Ours is sitting right here,” Felipe Jr. said by phone. “My truck doesn’t have a window on the side like the one in San Antonio. That one in San Antonio is not our trailer.” He said his father started the business in 2007 and bought the truck in 2020. He said the truck has been hauling grain from Harlingen to Progreso.

Victims Being Identified

The 51 migrants from Mexico and Central America were found in the abandoned tractor-trailer, which could fit around 100 people. Eleven other people were rescued from the trailer and were hospitalized, including an adolescent boy who was in critical condition at University Hospital.

The dead were 39 men and 12 women. Twenty-two were from Mexico, seven were from Guatemala and two were from Honduras, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said. The rest are still being identified.

Bexar County Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores, whose South Side precinct includes the area where the truck was found, said a 23-year-old woman from Guatemala being treated at University Hospital was in serious condition, and a teenage boy was there in critical condition.

Clay-Flores said 34 of the bodies have been “potentially identified.” But she said the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Officer has been stretched thin by the tragedy.

“Because of the high number of victims from last night, we have reached out to neighboring counties for assistance from their medical examiner’s offices also,” Clay-Flores said.

Clay-Flores advised those who feared that a loved one could have been on the tractor-trailer to call the Guatemalan Consulate at 956-800-7351.

*****

Steak seasoning, cloned trucks and dead illegals, sounds like a screen play for a crime show but reality is stranger than fiction.

Note: I changed the wording and title because the “source” wants to call the people in the trailer immigrants, but they are illegal alien immigrants not immigrants.