Credit Suisse Cuts Some Venezuelan Client Links - Report

Tom Burroughes

8 January 2021

has reportedly severed relationships with several Venezuelan high net worth individuals. It considers the risks of handling politically-exposed persons (PEPs) in the country, arguably wrecked by mass nationalisation of sectors such as oil, too high. Venezuela is also under trade sanctions from the US and other countries.

The bank has cut the assets that it manages for HNW persons in Venezuela by more than half over the past few years, to about $2 billion, Bloomberg quoted unnamed sources as saying. The report also said that Credit Suisse’s main Swiss rival, , in February last year was sanctioned by FINMA, the Alpine state’s regulator, for Venezuela-linked issues. The Zurich-listed bank was punished for failures over its anti-money laundering controls between 2009 and 2018. In 2018 a former Julius Baer banker based in Panama was convicted in a Miami court of helping to launder $1.2 billion embezzled from Venezuela’s state energy company, Petróleos de Venezuela.