A Federal Court in Switzerland has sentenced a former employee of Swiss bank Credit Suisse to two years (on probation) and a fine of 3500 Swiss francs for the theft of personal data of clients.
The subject of this story is worth screening. The former employee of Credit Suisse, who has not been named, was stealing personal data of the banks clients back in 2007, according to him because of his “curiosity”. Having uncovered enough information, the bank employee was going to sell it to German tax authorities. However, the fraudster was not able to carry out this deal because he left the briefcase with the “product”… in a gym.
An Austrian IT specialist, who was also visiting the fitness centre, discovered the briefcase and quickly realised what the information he came across was and who it was for. As a result, information on 2,500 investments fell into the hands of German tax authorities and the Austrian earned 2.5 million euros on the back of this information. 2 billion dollars was held in the compromised accounts.
Surprisingly, the forgetful Swiss man also received his share 320,000 euros. A little later the police took an interest in our heroes. The Austrian was arrested in September 2010. Soon after his arrest, he killed himself in the cell of a Berlin prison. The Swiss man lived to see the court’s sentence, having served his conditional sentence and his small fine.
The bank got through this story (apart from the damage done to its business reputation) by paying a settlement in the sum of 150 million euros to the German tax authorities.Chief analyst of Infotech, Nikolai Fedotov commented on the situation: «Let’s remember that this is already the third mole to obtain information on investors in Swiss banks. Until 2009, it was believed that there was no demand for such information as long as the French prosecutor didn’t buy it to expose citizens, hiding their incomes from tax authorities in Switzerland (a popular practice among Europeans). After this, leaks and exposures became commonplace. Having discovered, that people were willing to pay money for information, employees of Swiss banks happily started to sabotage the century-old reputation of their institutions»
