Amangate: Swiss bank may face criminal proceedings

Swiss bank UBS is likely to face criminal proceedings over its role in an alleged money-laundering network said to involve Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman.

Bruno Manser Fund (BMF), a rainforest advocacy group based in Switzerland, said that it had filed a complaint under criminal law against UBS with Zurich's public prosecutor over the bank's ties with Musa.

The complaint was filed on behalf of BMF by professor Monika Roth, a lawyer and well-known Swiss compliance expert, according to a statement released by the group yesterday.

The BMF accused UBS of having breached its due diligence duties as defined by the Swiss Criminal Code and called on Swiss authorities to take criminal action against UBS and those responsible for the bank's relationship with Musa (right), who is also the brother of Malaysia's Foreign Minister Anifah Aman.

Musa is being accused of having laundered over US$90 million (RM286 million) of corruption proceeds through a number of bank accounts with UBS in Hong Kong and Zurich.

In April 2012, the Swiss Federal Office of Justice confirmed that Switzerland has given legal assistance to Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption, which is investigating Musa's ties with UBS.

BMF has handed numerous documents as evidence to the Zurich Public Prosecutor's Office to prove that Michael Chia, a close associate of Musa, transferred large cash payments from timber companies with logging interests in Sabah into UBS bank accounts in Hong Kong.

From the same accounts, payments have been made to Musa's sons in Australia and to Mohd Daud Tampokong, a senior forestry official from Sabah, said BMF.

Yesterday whistleblower website Sarawak Report released a set of new documents, which had been submitted to the Singapore court in a civil case involving UBS and Chia, to back the money-laundering allegation against Musa.

The 'mover and shaker' for Musa

The BMF alleged that a Malaysian lawyer, to whose accounts where millions of US dollars were transferred, acted as a "mover and shaker" for Musa.

"By way of an example, on 21 August 2006, one of his accounts with UBS in Hong Kong was credited with US$4.6 million (RM14.6 million) paid only days earlier by Sabah timber tycoons into another UBS account controlled by Chia (right in photo).

"UBS plays a key role in everything, given that many of the relevant transactions in this case passed through this bank, and its employee, Dennis Chua - a former client advisor with HSBC in Hong Kong - was actively involved.

"It is, however, evident that other financial institutions in Asia and possibly in Switzerland were involved in this mesh and indeed still are," said the advocacy group.

The group has also submitted the account numbers of Musa's personal bank accounts with UBS in Hong Kong and in Zurich.

"How UBS ought to handle banking relationships with politically-exposed persons is stated in the law and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority's (Finma) regulations. These rules were blatantly disregarded in that no suitable measures were taken for enforcing them.

"That makes UBS liable in accordance with the provisions ... of the Swiss Criminal Code," it added.

The BMF urged the Zurich public prosecutor to take action under Swiss law against UBS and against the bank employees who have disregarded their due diligence duties in the Musa case.

"Moreover, the question is to be asked whether the whole mesh of corruption is to be regarded as a criminal organisation, which would then be linked to the further question of whether the behaviour of UBS were not to be qualified as support for that organisation."