Ex-Swiss banking chief convicted in $101M kickback scheme

Pierre Mirabaud, a former president of the Swiss Bankers' Association and longtime partner at the Geneva private bank bearing his family name, was found guilty on Tuesday of bribery and aggravated money laundering by Switzerland's Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona.bloomberg+1

The court determined that Mirabaud paid 82 million Swiss francs — roughly $101 million — in kickbacks over more than a decade to the chairman of Kuwait's Public Institution for Social Security to secure approximately $600 million in assets for Mirabaud & Cie to manage.cryptobriefing+1

A Suspended Sentence

Despite the scale of the scheme, Mirabaud received a two-year suspended sentence with a two-year probation period, meaning he will not serve prison time unless he violates probation terms. He was also ordered to pay 114,000 francs in legal and court costs.theedgemalaysia+1

Several factors worked in his favor. Mirabaud had agreed to a simplified procedure in which he admitted wrongdoing to expedite the proceedings. His age, clean prior record, and cooperation with authorities all weighed as mitigating circumstances. He had also already repaid PIFSS 42 million Swiss francs before the court's decision, covering roughly half of the bribe total. A separate document-forgery charge was dismissed.cryptobriefing+2

Decades of Payments

The bribes stretched from 2000 to 2012, spread across hundreds of transactions directed at Fahad Al Rajaan, who ran Kuwait's pension fund from 1984 to 2013. Mirabaud led the Swiss Bankers' Association from 2003 to 2009, a period when international pressure on Swiss banking secrecy was intensifying. He retired from the bank in 2009 but continued as a consultant until 2012 — the same year the last kickback payments were made.theedgemalaysia+1

The Wider Scandal

Al Rajaan's tenure at PIFSS triggered broader fallout. His assets were frozen and an Interpol arrest request was issued following criminal complaints. He was convicted on corruption and embezzlement charges by a Kuwaiti court in 2016 and died in London in 2022. The fund brought in new management in 2017 and exited more than $20 billion in questionable deals. The affair was also the subject of a London High Court trial last year, for which a verdict has yet to be delivered.theedgemalaysia

Mirabaud & Cie, founded in 1819, is among Geneva's oldest private banks. That its former senior partner — once the public face of Swiss banking — now stands convicted of corrupting it underscores how deeply the Al Rajaan scandal reached into the heart of European private finance.