A leak from the Swiss bank Credit Suisse has shown it provided services to clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes.
Guardian reporters Kalyeena Makortoff and David Pegg tell Michael Safi that the leak points to widespread failures of due diligence by Credit Suisse, despite repeated promises over decades to weed out dubious clients and illicit funds.
The huge trove of banking data was leaked by an anonymous whistleblower to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Guardian is part of a consortium of media outlets given exclusive access to it.
The bank said the allegations were largely historical, in some instances dating back to a time when “laws, practices and expectations of financial institutions were very different from where they are now”.
But while some accounts in the leak date back to the 1940s, many were still open well into the last decade, and a portion remain open today.
Composite: Guardian
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