The late Patrice Lescaudron was far from the sole perpetrator of a criminal scheme that Credit Suisse has portrayed him, according to a legal evaluation which portrays the Swiss bank as willfully ignorant. 

Patrice Lescaudron, an ex-Credit Suisse private banker to wealthy Eastern Europeans, was convicted of a $150 fraud nearly three years ago. Credit Suisse was also sanctioned by home regulator Finma, and the case is ticking on because a group of ex-clients of Lescaudron's is pursuing the Swiss wealth manager as well, as finews.com reported.

A legal evaluation prepared for Finma in 2017 casts doubts on Credit Suisse's claims that Lescaudron, who died by suicide six months ago, acted in isolation, according to the«Wall Street Journal,» (behind paywall) which viewed the report. 

Lescaudron’s dealings «triggered hundreds of alerts in the bank that weren’t fully probed in the 2009-15 period studied,» the outlet reported.

Turning Blind Eye

Roughly 12 executives or supervisors in Credit Suisse's private bank at the time knew the French banker was «repeatedly breaking rules but turned a blind eye, proposed lenient punishment for his misconduct or otherwise glossed over the issues because he brought in around $25 million in revenue a year,» the «WSJ» reported.

A spokesman for Credit Suisse said the report did not reveal any facts that would support the criminal complaints being pursued against the bank. Ex-Georgian leader Bidzina Ivanishvili is among Lescaudron's former clients who are seeking damages from Credit Suisse.

Iqbal Khan Queried

Credit Suisse's former top private banker Iqbal Khan was among a series of executives interviewed by the law firm, according to the report, made available by a group of disgruntled clients.

«An active involvement of Iqbal Khan in the present situation cannot be determined,» Geissbuehler Weber & Partner wrote in the report. Khan was finance chief of the unit until 2015, then ran it until he left early in 2019.

Tougher Questions

He is now co-head of UBS' private bank. A Khan associate, Claudio de Sanctis, inherited the ongoing Lescaudron file when Credit Suisse promoted him in 2015.

De Sanctis, who now runs Deutsche Bank's 272 billion euro ($326.2 billion) private bank, should have asked tougher questions about how the banker was previously disciplined, according to the report, and was found in breach of internal policies on effective supervision.