Doc shredding not associated to Russia oligarch sanctions

“Queen Ok,” a luxurious yacht owned by Oleg Deripaska, one in all a lot of Russian oligarchs who reportedly needed to terminate personal jet leases with Credit score Suisse amid earlier US sanctions.

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Credit score Suisse informed CNBC on Wednesday that US authorities will “completely not” discover any proof of wrongdoing because it faces a probe of its compliance with sanctions on Russian oligarchs.

The Swiss financial institution is beneath investigation by the Home Oversight Committee over allegations that it requested buyers to “destroy and completely erase” paperwork associated to a portfolio of loans backed by yachts and personal jets doubtlessly owned by sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

Credit score Suisse allegedly despatched the request to buyers 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 acquired by buyers 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 secured transactions we did earlier than,” he mentioned.

“It was a part of our coping with personal placement buyers, institutional buyers, 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 response to the FT, the request letters have been despatched throughout per week during which the US, UK and EU launched a recent wave of sanctions in opposition to 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 scaling again its operations there within the wake of the warfare.

“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.

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Going ahead, Gottstein mentioned the financial institution wouldn’t be taking over “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 monetary outcomes Wednesday, during which it reported a internet lack of 273 million Swiss francs ($283.5 million).

Russia-related losses accounted for 206 million francs of the losses, whereas the financial institution additionally took successful of 155 million francs associated to the Archegos scandal.

Gottstein has beforehand said that about 4% of the belongings the financial institution manages in its core wealth administration enterprise belong to Russian shoppers.

“We’ve roughly 4% of our belongings beneath administration in wealth administration with Russian shoppers, be they Russian-domiciled or Russian nationals who reside within the West,” Gottstein mentioned, in line with Reuters. That determine has not modified considerably since, the financial institution mentioned in an replace Wednesday.