ZURICH (Reuters) – A Swiss appeals court has rejected a banker’s bid to lift his three-year regulatory ban from working in the industry over failures to properly fight money-laundering linked to scandal-hit Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.
In a ruling released on Monday, the Federal Administrative Court turned down the appeal by the former senior executive at Swiss bank BSI, who had argued that Swiss watchdog FINMA’s ban was based on factual errors.
It found a lower court was justified in concluding that the now-retired banker was personally responsible for serious violations of anti-money-laundering provisions and bank procedures.
Reuters is not naming the banker given Swiss restrictions on reporting the names of people involved in criminal cases.
EFG International bought BSI in 2016 from Brazil’s BTG Pactual after BSI became tangled in legal problems related to 1MDB, which resulted in the closure of its Singapore branch in 2016.
1MDB raised billions of dollars in bonds, ostensibly for investment projects and joint ventures, between 2009 and 2013.
More than $4.5 billion belonging to 1MDB was allegedly misappropriated by high-level officials at the firm and their associates through a criminal scheme involving international money laundering and embezzlement.
The Swiss court ruling said that between 2011 and 2015, a web of sovereign wealth fund clients and businesspeople linked to the scandal conducted around $20 billion worth of transactions via BSI, generating around $140 million in revenue for the bank.
(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Jan Harvey)
