“Queen Okay,” a luxurious yacht owned by Oleg Deripaska, one in every of quite a lot of Russian oligarchs who reportedly needed to terminate non-public jet leases with Credit score Suisse amid earlier U.S. sanctions.
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Credit Suisse informed CNBC Wednesday that U.S. authorities will “completely not” discover any proof of wrongdoing because it faces a probe on its compliance with sanctions on Russian oligarchs.
The Swiss financial institution is under investigation by the Home Oversight Committee over allegations that it requested traders to “destroy and completely erase” paperwork associated to a portfolio of loans backed by yachts and personal jets probably owned by sanctioned Russian oligarchs.
Credit score Suisse allegedly despatched the request to traders following a report first surfaced by the Monetary Instances that it had offloaded the dangers regarding $2 billion of loans to a bunch of hedge funds.
CEO Thomas Gottstein mentioned Wednesday that the letter obtained by traders had “nothing to do” with sanctions or loans belonging to members of President Vladimir Putin‘s interior circle.
“[It] has nothing to do with destroying supplies associated to sanctions,” Gottstein informed CNBC’s Geoff Cutmore.
“This was a one-off transaction, which was very a lot a continuation of three different securitized transactions we did earlier than,” he continued.
“It was a part of our coping with non-public placement traders, institutional traders, and there have been completely no supplies in there that have been related from a sanctions perspective.”
Requested whether or not the financial institution had any case to reply, Gottstein mentioned “completely not.”
In line with the FT, the request letters have been despatched throughout every week wherein the U.S., U.Okay. and EU launched a contemporary wave of sanctions towards Russia over its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Russian enterprise
Gottstein additionally defended the financial institution’s place on Russian enterprise, saying that like different main Wall Road and European banks it was winding down its operations there within the wake of the conflict.
“As everyone else, we’re winding down our Russia enterprise,” he mentioned, reiterating an announcement made final month.
An indication above the doorway to the Credit score Suisse Group AG headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, on Monday, Nov. 1, 2021.
Thi My Lien Nguyen | Bloomberg | Getty Photographs
Going ahead, Gottstein mentioned the financial institution wouldn’t be taking up “any new enterprise, any new shoppers” from Russia, whereas additionally persevering with to wind down its publicity to present Russian shoppers.
“Our whole publicity to Russian shoppers — that features Russian shoppers everywhere in the world, not solely the Russian shoppers in Russia — and we’ve got been lowering this by 56% when it comes to our credit score publicity,” he mentioned.
The remarks comply with the discharge of Credit score Suisse’s first quarter 2022 financial results Wednesday, wherein it reported a internet lack of 273 million Swiss francs ($283.5 million).
Russia-related losses accounted for 206 million Swiss francs of the losses, whereas the financial institution additionally took successful of 155 million Swiss francs related to the Archegos scandal.
Gottstein has previously stated that roughly 4% of the property the financial institution manages in its core wealth administration enterprise belong to Russian shoppers.
“Now we have roughly 4% of our property below administration in wealth administration with Russian shoppers, be they Russian-domiciled or Russian nationals who reside within the West,” Gottstein mentioned, in response to Reuters. That determine has not modified considerably since, the financial institution mentioned in an replace Wednesday.
