From Ferdinand Marcos To Russian Oligarchs, Troubled Credit Suisse Is A Repeat Offender

What happens when you repeatedly let cocaine dealers, crooks, and kleptocrats use your bank? The Swiss National Bank approves you for a loan up to 50 billion francs ($54 billion). Credit Suisse demonstrated yet again the advantage of being a global systemically important bank. Central banks, bank regulators and treasuries rescue big banks for fear of the havoc that Too Big To Fail banks can cause around the globe.

A Decades-Long History Of Trouble

Tuesday, Credit Suisse announced significant weaknesses in its financial reporting in 2021 and 2022. This is hardly the first time that Credit Suisse has shown its significant operational risk exposure, that is, problems with its employees, processes, and technology. In their February 2022 article for The Guardian, Crooks, Kleptocrats, and Crises, Kalyeena Makortoff and David Pegg walked us down an over two-decade memory lane of recidivist behavior at Credit Suisse.