What do heavy sanctions against Julius Baer for helping Venezuela's «Boliboys» launder money mean for Boris Collardi, the long-standing ex-CEO of the wealth manager?
After a series of sanctions against Julius Baer for dealing in Venezuelan graft money, the Swiss financial regulator is looking into potential enforcement steps, as finews.asia reported on Thursday. The sanction for a «poor compliance and risk culture» which didn't fight money laundering with enough vim overlaps almost exactly with the tenure of ex-CEO Boris Collardi.
The Swiss banker, now a partner at Geneva's Pictet, will be watching Finma's next steps closely. Mark Branson, Finma's CEO, said the regulator will not look into whether members of Julius Baer's management held a «direct and causational responsibility» for the lapses, in an interview with Swiss daily «Luzerner Zeitung» on Wednesday (in German).
Bonuses Frozen
What does that mean? Effectively, Collardi would have to be caught on email or other documentation waving criminal money through Julius Baer and overriding compliance controls. The Swiss bank's head of risk at the time as Bernhard Hodler, who succeeded Collardi in the CEO job in autumn 2017.
Julius Baer is reportedly freezing bonus payments for some ex-top executives including the duo as a result of the Finma sanction. For Collardi, who likely earns far more as a partner at Pictet than he ever could at a publicly-listed bank, this is moot: the banker left 7 million Swiss francs ($7.2 million) on the table anyway when he made the jump.
Smoking Gun?
If Finma can and does establish Collardi had the «direct and causational» link to the graft money that Swiss banking law would require for a sanction, then he could potentially be banned from the industry. Barring a smoking gun, the likelihood of this is infinitesimally small.
Though there is little indication Collardi will face sanctions for Julius Baer's woes, the issue has led to raised eyebrows among Pictet's six other partners led by asset manager Renaud de Planta. A spokesman for the Genevan wealth manager didn't comment. Since Finma began making use of professional bans under Branson, the regulator has issued 56 such orders – the majority are in force, though some are still pending appeal.
