Full article at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Europe/2000-09/nigeria050900.shtml Major banks named in $3bn Nigeria fraud By Imre Karacs in Berlin 5 September 2000 Swiss investigators searching for the loot of the late Nigerian dictator General Sani Abacha yesterday launched a scathing attack on their country's banking system, and accused Britain and the United States of being part of a huge money-laundering operation. In a separate aspect of the report, the Swiss arm of one City institution, J Henry Schroder Bank, was among several banks criticised. Switzerland's watchdog, the Federal Banking Commission, spent 10 months trying to find an estimated $3bn pilfered by General Abacha, Nigeria's President from 1993 to 1998. Switzerland had frozen $670m and returned $66m to Nigeria, and Britain has also been asked formally to freeze funds. The main banking regulator in Switzerland was shocked at the ease with which General Abacha and his family were able to move their shady money across frontiers. "The fact alone that significant funds of dubious origin from the close entourage of the former Nigerian President Sani Abacha were deposited in Swiss bank accounts is disturbing and damaging to the reputation of Switzerland's financial sector," said the report. But the Abacha affair "is not a problem of purely Swiss nature", it added. "The funds came, as well as from Nigeria, also from countries such as the United States, Britain and Austria. Funds were transferred from Swiss banks to banks in the US, Britain, France, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. The watchdog cited the J Henry Schroder Bank and five others for "minor infractions". Luxembourg has frozen about $650m, Liechtenstein over $100m. The Swiss regulators said Britain, Germany and France were dragging their heels finding General Abacha's money, which Nigeria claims was stolen from the country's central bank. But even the Swiss watchdog admits its banks were the worst offenders. "In six banks, violations and organisational shortcomings were serious enough to give rise to countermeasures on the personnel and the organisational level," the report said. Prosecutors in Geneva have begun a criminal investigation. Switzerland has been criticised for providing a haven for the ill-gotten gains of the former president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, and the Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier. Although the country claims procedures have been tightened up, it is clear from the Swiss watchdog's report that gaps remain. General Abacha died in 1998, allegedly from a heart attack, but a year later his two sons were still depositing large sums in Switzerland. Credit Suisse Private Banking accepted $214m from General Abacha's sons, accepting an introduction from a long-standing client and failing to note they were "politically exposed" although it should have been alerted by their age, their nationality and the sums involved, the report said. A Geneva judge has indicted two people, including Abacha's son Mohammed, in connection with a money-laundering investigation launched here. He is in jail in Lagos charged with murder.
