A lawyer who worked for Credit Suisse claims the bank also had her followed. The episode involves Credit Suisse's partnership with Silicon Valley firm Palantir.
Credit Suisse's head of compliance in the U.S. until 2017 accused the Swiss bank of having her followed, according to a report in «The Wall Street Journal». Colleen Graham, an American lawyer who worked as a managing director at the Swiss bank for nearly 12 years, worked for a joint venture between Credit Suisse and Palantir, called Signac.
The loss-making Silicon Valley firm is key to Credit Suisse's efforts to deliver improvements home regulator Finma mandated by year-end after several big money laundering scandals. «I love our partnership with Palantir,» Tidjane Thiam, the Swiss bank's CEO, said last year. The technology company began helping the bank root out rogue staff before expanding its remit.
Backdrop of Scandal
Graham was co-CEO of Signac for more than one year before the two companies dissolved the vehicle. The lawyer related in U.S. court filings that she believed she was followed in 2017 by an investigator working for the bank.
Her claims are explosive because they follow another Credit Suisse spy scandal which played out in the narrow streets surrounding its headquarters on Zurich's Paradeplatz square. Operating chief Pierre-Olivier Bouée had to leave the bank for overseeing the spying, which the bank apologized for. CEO Thiam, increasingly isolated, faces an uphill battle to restore trust following the lurid affair.
Combining Probes
Following those revelations, Graham wrote to Thiam, Chairman Urs Rohner, director John Tiner, and law firm Homburger in Zurich, the newspaper reported. Tiner is the former head of the U.K. regulator and helped oversee the outside probe by Homburger into the Khan scandal. She also met with Swiss regulator Finma last month.
Graham, who founded a compliance consulting firm last year according to her LinkedIn profile, wanted Credit Suisse to investigate her 2017 allegations, and to add her information to the Khan probe. Credit Suisse told the newspaper that it had found Graham's claims to be baseless following an internal investigation.
Threats, Shadowing
Graham had already blown the whistle to U.S. officials in 2017, the year she left Credit Suisse. She claims Credit Suisse, as well as Palantir, pressured her in 2016 to «distort the facts» to its auditor on the timing of booking revenue. A U.S. labor court isn't set to hear her case until next year.
She refused, and then felt short-changed on her bonus, and was subtly threatened with sacking. After Graham took a lawyer in the labor dispute, she said she spotted a woman following her for several days and believes Credit Suisse as well as Palantir intervened to prevent her from getting a job she had interviewed for at another finance firm.
Credit Suisse and Palantir deny her accusations. Graham is also in private arbitration with the two companies to recoup the equity she held in Signac before it was dissolved.
