Credit score Suisse ordered to pay $926mn to former prime minister of Georgia

Credit score Suisse has been ordered by a Singaporean decide to pay $926mn to former Georgian prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, a last blow to the financial institution earlier than UBS is predicted to finish its takeover as quickly as subsequent week.

Ivanishvili, who’s Georgia’s richest man, had already received a case in opposition to the Swiss financial institution in Bermuda final 12 months, the place he was awarded $607.5mn.

The billionaire’s dispute with Credit score Suisse dates again to 2011 when he was a shopper and sufferer of a non-public banker who defrauded among the Swiss lender’s most delicate accounts.

For greater than a decade, Credit score Suisse personal banker Patrice Lescaudron defrauded among the financial institution’s purchasers — together with these held by Ivanishvili and Russian oligarch Vitaly Malkin — funding a lavish life-style of luxurious homes, sports activities vehicles and Rolex watches.

A damning report into the affair by the Swiss regulator Finma, which was inadvertently made public two years in the past, discovered repeated warning indicators, proof of a whole lot of suspicious transactions and 4 formal disciplinary proceedings had not been acted upon by Credit score Suisse.

The financial institution has lengthy maintained that Lescaudron — who was criminally convicted in 2018 and died by suicide in 2020 after an early launch — was a extremely profitable rogue operator who labored tirelessly to cover his criminal activity from superiors and colleagues. The Swiss prison case in opposition to Lescaudron discovered the financial institution to have been a wronged get together.

A decide on the Singapore Worldwide Business Courtroom on Friday ordered Credit score Suisse’s native subsidiary to pay $926mn, much less $79mn that it had already paid. The decide mentioned that the sum within the Bermuda case ought to be recalculated in order that there was no double restoration.

In an announcement following the judgment, Credit score Suisse mentioned it will “vigorously pursue an enchantment”. “The judgment printed in the present day is fallacious and poses very important authorized points,” it mentioned.

The longstanding dispute with Ivanishvili is certainly one of a number of authorized battles that has hung over Credit score Suisse in recent times. UBS has put aside $4bn to cowl Credit score Suisse’s regulatory and litigation issues.

UBS’s takeover of its Swiss rival could possibly be accomplished as early as subsequent week after it acquired approval from EU antitrust regulators for the deal on Thursday.