A Swiss court has charged Credit Suisse of allowing a Bulgarian cocaine trafficking gang to launder millions of euros.
Some of the laundered cash were stuffed into suitcases, according to a Reuters report.
Switzerland’s second biggest bank, Credit Suisse, failed to take necessary steps to prevent the traffickers from laundering cash between 2004 and 2008, Swiss prosecutors said.
Prosecutors are seeking around 42.4 million Swiss francs in compensation from Credit Suisse.
Credit Suisse intends to “defend itself vigorously in court”.
Reuters reports that the indictment runs to more than 500 pages, and centres on relationships that Credit Suisse and its ex-employee had with former Bulgarian wrestler Evelin Banev and multiple associates, two of whom are charged in the case.
A second indictment in the case charges a former relationship manager at Julius Baer with facilitating money laundering.
Banev was convicted of drug trafficking in Italy in 2017 and then in Bulgaria in 2018 for being part of a criminal organisation active in trafficking tonnes of cocaine from Latin America.
He vanished, but was arrested in September in Ukraine, from where Bulgarian prosecutors are seeking his extradition to face charges of setting up an organised criminal group and drug trafficking, Interpol’s red list of wanted persons shows.
