Credit Suisse leak once again shows that banks are the problem, not crypto

Anyone here remember the pandora papers back in august that showed how the rich were hiding billions of dollars in secretive accounts to avoid paying taxes, and not having to declare Ill-gotten gains? Well guess what, it happened again! This time with a Swiss bank. Here are the juiciest parts quoted from this guardian article:

They[The clients of Credit Suisse] include a human trafficker in the Philippines, a Hong Kong stock exchange boss jailed for bribery, a billionaire who ordered the murder of his Lebanese pop star girlfriend and executives who looted Venezuela’s state oil company, as well as corrupt politicians from Egypt to Ukraine.

One Vatican-owned account in the data was used to spend €350m (£290m) in an allegedly fraudulent investment in London property that is at the centre of an ongoing criminal trial of several defendants, including a cardinal.

The timing of the leak could hardly be worse for Credit Suisse, which has recently been beset by major scandals. Last month, it lost its chairman, António Horta-Osório, after he twice broke Covid-19 regulations. That capped an unprecedented year of controversies in which the bank became embroiled in the collapse of the supply chain finance firm Greensill Capital and the US hedge fund Archegos Capital, and was fined £350m over its role in a loan scandal in Mozambique. This month, Credit Suisse became the first major Swiss bank in the country’s history to face criminal charges – which it denies – relating to allegation it helped launder money from the cocaine trade on behalf of the Bulgarian mafia.

The bank also said the allegations were largely historical, in some instances dating back to a time when “laws, practices and expectations of financial institutions were very different from where they are now”.

Swiss financial institutions manage about 7.9tn CHF (£6.3tn) in assets, nearly half of which belongs to foreign clients.

The Tax Justice Network estimates that countries around the world collectively lose $21bn (£15.4bn) each year in tax revenues because of [banks in] Switzerland.

Time and time again, people act as if banks aren’t the problem, and crypto is, but the truth is most blockchains are 100% transparent, as seen with the latest bitfinex recovery. The same rich people who hide their wealth in offshore bank accounts complain that crypto does just that.