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The former head of Switzerland’s banking lobby has been convicted of bribery and aggravated money laundering over SFr82mn ($101mn) in payments to a Kuwaiti official in exchange for placing state pension assets with his bank.
Pierre Mirabaud, a former senior partner of the Geneva private bank that bears his family name, was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence by Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona on Tuesday.
Mirabaud was president of the Swiss Bankers Association from 2003 to 2009, putting him at the top of the country’s banking establishment during part of the period covered by the case. He was a partner at Mirabaud for 30 years before becoming a consultant to the bank.
The case centred on Fahad Al-Rajaan, the former director-general of Kuwait’s Public Institution for Social Security. The Federal Criminal Court said Mirabaud provided the Kuwaiti official with SFr82.3mn in improper payments in return for decisions to place PIFSS assets with Mirabaud and invest in funds managed in part by the banking group.
By the end of 2012, the Kuwaiti institution held $595.3mn in the investment funds, according to the court.
Mirabaud was also convicted of aggravated money laundering relating to 122 transfers worth almost SFr77mn that prosecutors said were intended to obscure the criminal origin of the payments and hinder their recovery.
The retired banker admitted the facts during Tuesday’s hearing and told the court he had made a “very grave error of judgment”. He said he had personally earned $1.8mn from the arrangement over the period.
He was also ordered to pay SFr82,000 in legal and court costs and will be subject to a two-year probation period.
Mirabaud was tried under Switzerland’s simplified procedure, under which a defendant accepts the facts and a proposed sentence is submitted to the court.
Al-Rajaan, who ran the Kuwaiti pension fund for almost three decades, was later convicted in Kuwait of corruption and embezzlement and died in London in 2022.
Mirabaud, founded in Geneva in 1819, is one of Switzerland’s oldest private banks. The bank itself was not a defendant in Tuesday’s case.
“Throughout this case, which began in 2012, Pierre Mirabaud has fully co-operated with the judicial authorities,” Mirabaud’s lawyer said in a statement.
“Today he accepts responsibility for his actions, in accordance with the principles of individual responsibility, to which he has always been deeply committed . . . settlement has been reached and the matter is now closed.”
