On Tuesday, the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona sentenced Pierre Mirabaud, aged 77, to two years’ imprisonment, suspended. Mirabaud chaired the Swiss Bankers’ Association between 2003 and 2009 and was a partner at the Geneva-based private bank that bears his surname, one of the oldest and most respected in the country. He admitted the facts: for years, he channelled hidden commissions totalling more than 82 million francs to the then director of the Kuwaiti State Pension Fund, so that the latter would invest Kuwaiti public funds – more than 595 million dollars – in investment products offered by his bank.
He was also convicted of aggravated money laundering, as he transferred those commissions in a manner designed to make it difficult to trace their origin. He has already repaid 42 of the 82 million. In the same case, three other well-known figures from Geneva have been convicted in parallel: Yves Mirabaud, the former president of the Geneva Bar Association, Luc Argand, and the head of a trust company. The Kuwaiti official, now deceased, had previously been convicted in absentia in his own country for corruption and the misappropriation of public funds.
What is most striking is not the figure – which is already considerable – but the sentence. A two-year suspended sentence for having maintained, over the course of a decade, a system of hidden commissions totalling more than 82 million francs. Meanwhile, any foreign resident knows just how complicated it can become to obtain a B permit due to a debt of a few thousand francs owed to the tax authorities, or how costly a fine can be for failing to report a change of address on time. The Swiss justice system has done its job, and in this case it has done so by naming and shaming a high-profile figure. Yet it is hard not to think that there are offences that are punished with years of actual imprisonment, and offences which, when committed by someone in a suit with substantial wealth, are resolved with a suspended sentence and a partial repayment.