Credit Suisse admits to second spying case

Credit Suisse has been forced into a second embarrassing apology. Keystone / Walter Bieri

An investigation by Credit Suisse has confirmed that a second employee was placed under “inexcusable” surveillance. The bank said that employees had lied about this during an earlier probe into the spying of a former executive.

But the bank denied that CEO Tidjane Thiam or the board of directors had been aware of either spying case. The blame has again been laid squarely with former executive Pierre-Olivier Bouée, who has been sacked.

The bank had already apologized for spying on former wealth management head Iqbal Khan, who has subsequently moved on to rivals UBS. It has now been forced to repeat this message regarding its former head of human resources Peter Goerke.

“The observation of Peter Goerke, which has now been confirmed, is inexcusable,” chairman Urs Rohner said in a statement on MondayExternal link. “It is of grave concern that the responsible individuals failed to answer truthfully about this observation during the external investigation in September 2019.”

“We are aware that the observations of Iqbal Khan and Peter Goerke have damaged the reputation of our bank. With the measures that we have put in place, we are sending a clear message that the Board of Directors firmly rejects a culture of observation.”

Credit Suisse said it would fully cooperate with a probe by Swiss financial regulator after the second covert surveillance case was uncovered by a newspaper. It added that “safeguards” have already been put into place to prevent this from happening again.

“These include personnel decisions and the mandate to implement more rigorous internal policies.”