Former Credit Suisse banker pleads guilty for aiding Americans hiding millions of dollars from US tax authorities. Faces possibly 5 years in jail.

Mrs R*, who worked in the Zurich office of Credit Suisse between 2002 and 2011, entered the guilty plea while on trial in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, for conspiring to defraud the United States.

Prosecutors say that Mrs R*, in her role at the head of the bank’s North American desk, oversaw the accounts of up to 1,500 clients whose assets she helped place in secret Swiss and offshore accounts.

When one US client was informed that the bank planned to close his account, Mrs R* advised him to withdraw $1 million in cash, place it in a paper bag and take it down the street in Zurich to seek another bank that would deposit the money.

She also advised customers on other methods for withdrawing account funds to evade detection by tax authorities and took active steps to conceal the nature of and purpose of her business while meeting with clients in the United States, according to prosecutors.

Mrs R* admitted in court that the loss to US tax coffers could be anywhere between $3.5 million and $9.5 million as a result of her actions. She faces up to five years in prison and is due to be sentenced on September 8.

In 2009, Swiss bank UBS was fined $780 million for its role in tax avoidance. And in 2014, in a landmark case, Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to similar criminal charges, agreeing to pay a fine of $2.5 billion to US authorities.

It was also during this period that Swiss and US authorities agreed that banks could share information regarding specific employees involved in illegal practices.

In 2014, Credit Suisse said it had disclosed over 1,000 employee names to US authorities. Many individual bankers have since been prosecuted for their roles, while others have remained in Switzerland in an attempt to avoid extradition.

Some individual workers felt “betrayed” by a system in which they were simply doing their job. Several challenged the release of their personal data in Swiss courts.

More recently, the focus has shifted to European clients hiding assets in Swiss banks. In March 2017, Credit Suisse was again in the news following a coordinated raid into so-called “black” accounts spearheaded by the Netherlands.

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