Credit Suisse Anti-Money Laundering Cases

As of November 2026: As of November 2026 no final conviction of Credit Suisse or UBS for money laundering offences was found. The March 2026 Bulgarian acquittal was reported as not final, and the April 2026 dismissal of the Mozambique charge against UBS was reported as open to appeal within 10 days; no report of a further appeal by the prosecutor was found, but the Federal Supreme Court's records and the Swiss prosecutor's later releases were not searched exhaustively. The ruling date for the March 2026 acquittal is given as 3 or 4 March in different reports, and details of the April and May 2026 rulings come from news reports, not court texts. The end of the US deferred prosecution agreement and the outcome of the individual charges in Switzerland were not confirmed from primary sources. The court documents and regulator decisions behind the 2022 verdict were not reviewed. Credit Suisse's other legal matters, such as tax cases, are outside this page.

Also known as: Credit Suisse Bulgarian cocaine ring case · Credit Suisse Mozambique tuna bonds · Credit Suisse FINMA money laundering findings.

What happened?

Credit Suisse was a Swiss global bank until UBS took it over in June 2023. Over about eight years it faced several separate actions on financial crime. They are easy to mix up because they involve different authorities, different facts and different kinds of finding.

• Switzerland’s regulator, 2018. FINMA concluded two enforcement procedures in September 2018. One covered accounts tied to suspected corruption at FIFA, the Brazilian oil company Petrobras and the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA. The other covered a relationship with a politically exposed person.
• A Bulgarian drug-money case, 2020 to 2026. In December 2020 Swiss federal prosecutors charged the bank, a former client adviser and two other people over assets of a Bulgarian criminal organisation involved in drug trafficking and large-scale laundering. In June 2022 the Federal Criminal Court convicted the bank. The appeals chamber later acquitted UBS as its successor.
• Mozambique’s “tuna bonds”, 2013 to 2026. Credit Suisse arranged loans for Mozambican state-owned companies. This is mainly a fraud and bribery case, not a laundering scheme: the US charge was conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Laundering enters through guilty pleas by two former bankers and through Swiss charges that the bank failed to prevent it.

Which techniques did it use?

None of these records describes the bank itself running a laundering scheme. They describe an insider route and gaps in control.

In the Bulgarian case, the court found the bank failed to monitor its relationships with the criminal organisation and to enforce its anti-money laundering rules, so the group could move part of the money it had deposited. Prosecutors said tens of millions of francs passed through the bank between 2004 and 2008, and the court found that a former client adviser’s actions helped the group withdraw more than CHF 19 million from Switzerland. That is the professional enabler pattern: a trusted insider whose position gives dirty money a normal look.

In the Mozambique case, US authorities said a contractor paid about $50 million in kickbacks to Credit Suisse bankers and about $150 million in bribes to Mozambican officials. Swiss prosecutors separately allege that a state-guaranteed “running fee” of about USD 7.86 million reached the bank in spring 2016 and that about USD 7 million was later sent to accounts in the United Arab Emirates. These are allegations. The funds’ alleged origin is corruption, so the alleged predicate offence is corruption, not drug trafficking.

How was it found?

For the FIFA, Petrobras and PDVSA reviews, FINMA investigated suspected corruption involving those three bodies. It opened one integrated procedure on Credit Suisse in February 2017, covering 2006 to 2016.

For Mozambique, the loans became public in 2016. The US Department of Justice publicly charged three former Credit Suisse UK bankers in 2019, and FINMA said the bank only reported a suspicious payment to Switzerland’s reporting office (MROS, its financial intelligence unit) after that. The UK regulator covered October 2012 to March 2016 and said the warning signs should have been clear to the bank’s control functions.

The sources reviewed do not say how the Bulgarian investigation began.

What was the outcome?

• FINMA, September 2018. It found breaches of due diligence rules and ordered fixes, including a single view of all client relationships by the end of 2019, and an independent reviewer (a type of compliance monitor). Its release mentions no fine.
• United States, October 2021. A Credit Suisse UK subsidiary pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and the parent entered a three-year deferred prosecution agreement. The criminal penalty was about $247.5 million, or about $175.5 million after crediting other payments. The DOJ said the total penalties, fines and disgorgement exceeded $547 million, with about $475 million payable to US and UK authorities. Three former bankers had earlier pleaded guilty, one to wire fraud conspiracy and two to money laundering conspiracy.
• United Kingdom, October 2021. The FCA fined the bank £147,190,276 for failing to manage financial crime risk, and the bank agreed to forgive US$200 million of Mozambican debt.
• FINMA, October 2021. It found serious breaches of organisational and reporting duties and ordered group-wide risk changes, independent reviews and temporary conditions on loans to weak or corruption-prone states.
• Bulgarian case, Switzerland. On 27 June 2022 the court fined the bank CHF 2 million, ordered CHF 12 million seized and a CHF 19 million replacement claim, and gave the former client adviser a suspended 20-month sentence. In November 2024 the appeals chamber acquitted UBS because a former employee in the case had died, and the prosecutor appealed. After the Federal Supreme Court sent the case back, the chamber acquitted UBS again in March 2026. The fine and claim fell away. UBS argues the case should instead have been discontinued because liability cannot pass to a successor.
• Mozambique, Switzerland. Prosecutors charged the bank and UBS in December 2025. On 8 April 2026 the Federal Criminal Court dismissed the corporate case against UBS, saying criminal liability could not pass to UBS through the merger. UBS had also settled with Mozambique in 2023. Prosecutors also charged a former compliance employee with alleged money laundering; all accused are presumed innocent, and that outcome was not confirmed.

What were the warning signs?

• Late classification of risk. FINMA found that the bank was slow to treat a politically exposed client as higher risk and that checks and records were incomplete.
• Repeat faults over years. FINMA said the shortcomings occurred repeatedly, mainly before 2014, and were above average in relationships opened by a former subsidiary.
• A star performer who broke rules. FINMA said a very successful relationship manager repeatedly breached compliance rules, was not disciplined promptly and was paid high sums.
• Weak oversight of staff. The Swiss court found the bank did not monitor how its own employees applied the rules.
• Warnings that went unheeded. The DOJ said the bank knew of corruption concerns about the contractor and of a gap of $265 million to $394 million between funds raised and the value of the goods, and did not tell investors. The FCA said there was “insufficient challenge”.
• A slow report. FINMA said a suspicious payment of about USD 8 million was reported only in 2019.

What changed afterwards?

FINMA required the bank to rebuild its controls, with independent reviewers. The Bulgarian trial showed that a bank can be tried in Switzerland for deficient organisation, but also how hard it is to carry such a case through years of appeals.

UBS’s takeover raised a legal question that is still open: whether a buyer inherits a predecessor’s criminal liability. A court said no in the Mozambique case in April 2026, and prosecutors could still challenge that ruling. This is called successor liability. Compare the settlements at HSBC and Standard Chartered, and see transaction monitoring and know your customer for what banks are expected to do.

First published November 4, 2026 · Last updated November 4, 2026 · Legal statuses current as of November 2026