Credit Suisse’s criminal fine left clients unnamed and U.S. operations intact

Evidence

Credit Suisse agreed to a guilty plea and was fined $2.6 billion, a modest cost for a huge bank. As part of the deal, the bank was not required to release the names of its American clients on the grounds that doing so would violate Swiss law. Moreover, the bank was granted a waiver, allowing it to continue doing business in the United States despite the criminal conviction. In the view of Protess and Silver-Greenberg (2014c), “other than fines and the reputational stain of being a felon, the implications are likely to be limited.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1583

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘too big to jail’ theme and to discretionary prosecutorial decisions; echoes the general pattern of symbolic rather than substantive corporate accountability.