The leak of 30,000 bank accounts belonging to Credit Suisse has revealed the enormous wealth of dictators, criminals, officials and business tycoons involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes. It confirms the financial parasitism, fraud and illegality that permeates the ruling elite in every capitalist country.
The revelations cover only a small proportion of the bank’s 1.5 million private clients and includes personal, shared and corporate bank accounts worth $108 billion. Nearly 200 accounts are worth more than $108 million, with a dozen or more worth billions. Some were opened in the 1940s, but more than two-thirds were opened after 2000. Many have since closed.
The investigation, known as Suisse Secrets, began with a leak by an anonymous whistleblower to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and was coordinated with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). It involved analyses by 160 journalists from media organisations around the world, including the Guardian, Le Monde, NDR, the Miami Herald and the New York Times.
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