Following Iqbal Khan through the streets of Zurich wasn’t the only observation job ordered by Credit Suisse this year, according to a media report. Private detectives were paid to shadow another top executive.

Peter Goerke and Pierre-Olivier Bouée were two of CEO Tidjane Thiam’s confidants who joined the bank after he had taken the reins in Zurich. Both have since left the executive board: Goerke resigned in February as head of human resources, chief operating officer Bouée followed in October.

Bouée lost his job over the observation of Iqbal Khan, the former wealth management head of Credit Suisse. It now emerges that Goerke had private investigators follow him around, paid by his employer, according to a report in «Neue Zuercher Zeitung» (in German, behind paywall) published on Monday evening.

«Operation Kuesnacht»

A few days before Goerke resigned from the executive board, Credit Suisse had him followed on a day off from his residence to Zurich's airport. Upon his return from Manchester the same day, the private eyes shadowed him back home again.

The observation was dubbed «Operation Kuesnacht», the name of the rich suburb on the shores of Lake of Zurich where Goerke lived. A few days later, on February 26, Credit Suisse announced the replacement of Goerke with Antoinette Poschung.

An Isolated Case?

The investigators paid to follow Goerke had to find out whether he met with people, to take pictures of people he met with, the places he visited and to report any other important information obtained by following him around, the newspaper said in the report.

The observation of Goerke casts a shadow over the explanation that Thiam and Chairman Urs Rohner had used to justify the observation of Khan. In an interview with Swiss Television «SRF» (in German), Thiam had said that the observation of Khan was an isolated case.

Rohner at the press conference presenting the bank's report on the case had said that the observation of Khan, today a top executive at rival UBS, had been wrong and not in keeping with the bank’s tradition. The report by «Neue Zuercher Zeitung» suggests that the observation of Khan was not an isolated case.