Banking group Credit Suisse says it has, to date, paid $210m (£173m, €197m) to billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili in a long-running legal saga, newswire Bloomberg reports.
Ivanishvili sued the bank’s trust unit for $800m in damages and lost income that he claims he would have made over the years if his money had been safely invested. He was a former client of wealth manager Patrice Lescaudron, who admitted hiding losses of CHF143m (£128m, €145m, $154m). In 2020, Lescaudron took his own life.
A spokesperson for the bank told Bloomberg that the sum was paid to Ivanishvili “over time for the proceedings across all the plaintiff’s accounts”.
The statement did not reveal a figure for the ongoing trial, or give a time frame for when the money was paid out. The statement is reportedly set to mark the end of the trial which began in September.
Ivanishvili, a tycoon and former prime minister of Georgia, was the victim of a scheme Lescaudron ran to cover growing losses among other client portfolios. Lescaudron was a “lone wolf” who hid his crimes from colleagues, the bank said in the Bloomberg statement.
Credit Suisse declined to provide a comment to International Adviser when asked about the Bloomberg article.
It is not the first time that Credit Suisse has made headlines in the wake of Lescaudron’s actions. In March 2022, the bank said it was expecting a Bermuda court to hand down a $500m penalty to its life insurance subsidiary Credit Suisse Life Bermuda. At the time, Reuters said it was linked to people seeking compensation for losses caused by Lescaudron.
