A lawyer who pleaded guilty to a money laundering conspiracy and testified for US prosecutors in a bribery case was reappointed to the board of Hyposwiss Private Bank Zurich, Bloomberg reported.

The Swiss bank announced Hans Bodmer’s appointment in a 6 June press release that made no reference to his 2004 guilty plea in a New York federal court or his testimony at the 2009 bribery trial, the news service said. The Zurich-based wealth manager also named Adolf Real, chairman of the Liechtenstein Bankers Association, to its board. Also in June, it appointed Kurt Frischknecht to head the firm’s private banking operations in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.

Hyposwiss is part of St Galler Kantonalbank and has 200 employees based in Geneva and Zurich. Its assets under management currently stand at SFr11.3 billion ($13.3 billion).

“Hans Bodmer and Adolf Real both have years of management experience in private banking as well as in its regulatory environment,” Roland Ledergerber, chairman of Hyposwiss, said in the 6 June news release. “With these two new members, I am convinced that we are in a good position to continue our controlling and management tasks efficiently and effectively.”

The news service said Hyposwiss had no immediate comment.

“Mr Bodmer’s case, dating back nearly 10 years, did not involve any violations of Swiss law,” Bodmer’s lawyer, Saul Pilchen of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom in Washington, was quoted as saying by the news service. “The appointment by Hyposwiss shows the bank’s well-placed confidence in his integrity as well as his business judgment.”

At the 2009 bribery trial of Frederic Bourke, the co-founder of handbag maker Dooney & Bourke, Bodmer was one of two prosecution witnesses to testify that they told Bourke about bribes paid to government leaders in Azerbaijan as part of a 1998 bid to win control of the state oil company. Bourke was part of a group of investors led by Czech expatriate Viktor Kozeny and his company, Oily Rock Group.

According to the US indictment in the case, Bodmer used “his position as a member of the board of directors of Hyposwiss Bank” to route payments from Kozeny to government officials in Azerbaijan. At the trial, Bodmer testified about how he used Swiss accounts as part of the scheme.

Bourke was convicted of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a US anti-bribery law, and sentenced to a year in prison. He is appealing. Bodmer, who is seeking leniency in return for his testimony, has yet to be sentenced, and his case is pending in Manhattan.