Credit Suisse’s Patrice Lescaudron gets five years for huge financial crime
Geneva — A former Credit Suisse wealth manager has been found guilty of diverting money from client accounts to cover mounting trading losses, in one of the biggest financial crime cases in Swiss history. Patrice Lescaudron was sentenced to five years in prison Friday in a verdict delivered by a three-judge panel in Geneva. Lescaudron caused losses of Sf143m ($152m) and personally enriched himself by Sf30m. "By his cunning trickery of both his clients and the bank, he rendered himself guilty of fraud," Judge Alexandra Banna said as she read out the verdict. The judgment caps a tumultuous two years for Credit Suisse’s wealth management unit and Lescaudron, who was described during the trial as a former "star". The French citizen has been in a Geneva jail since January 2015 as prosecutors investigated how he made unauthorised trades and faked purchase orders to cover his clients’ losses. The scheme, which ran for more than six years, went undetected by Credit Suisse and his clients un...
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