Falcon Private Bank's former top lawyer overturned a two-year professional ban in Switzerland over the Swiss wealth manager's dealings with 1MDB.
The Swiss banker was once Falcon Private Bank's chief lawyer as well as deputy to operating chief Tobias Ungerer. In 2017, the unidentified lawyer was banned from the industry for two years by Swiss regulator Finma.
However, the executive wasn't a member of Falcon's top management – in short, he wasn't in a senior enough position to notify Switzerland's money laundering authority, MROS. The court also ruled that Finma hadn't been able to argue that he posed a threat for future employers.
«He didn't merely wave transactions through from a compliance perspective,» the court wrote. The executive had followed up on suspicious activities, intervening in a major real estate transaction by a Malaysian businessman at the center of the scandal. The client is not named, but easily identifiable as Jho Low, the alleged 1MDB mastermind who remains AWOL.
Finma provided an unusually detailed catalogue of Falcon's 1MDB offenses when it sanctioned the bank more than two years ago. Since then, the bank, which faces its third straight annual loss and remains under Finma's close scrutiny, has sought to reinvent itself as a crypto wealth manager.
