In Switzerland, a special parliamentary commission has completed the second of four phases of investigation into the Credit Suisse debacle.
The actual investigation work now begins in the third phase, according to a statement from Parliament on Friday. These included the evaluation of documents and hearings with representatives of the federal authorities. Representatives of the government, the Ministry of Finance, the financial market supervisory authority Finma and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) would be heard. This work is expected to last until the end of February.
The investigation is intended to clarify what went wrong in the years before the collapse of the second largest Swiss bank and how the government, together with other authorities, orchestrated an emergency takeover of the crisis bank by its competitor UBS in March 2023. The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (PUK) began its work in July and first defined a rough schedule and then the investigation concept.
In a fourth phase of the investigation, the committee will prepare a final report and make recommendations. The PUK is the strongest control instrument available to Parliament and has only been used four times in Switzerland’s modern history.
The commission also awarded three external mandates. An investigator should clarify specific questions regarding the implementation of financial market supervision legislation. In addition, a legal comparison should show how Swiss financial market legislation compares internationally. The third mandate includes analyzing the development of Credit Suisse over the past few years. The assessment of the management of the institute is not the responsibility of the PUK. Nevertheless, this is important in order to be able to assess the management of the authorities.
Zurich (Reuters)