Credit Suisse creates 'bad bank' unit for US clients

Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse, which could be facing loomingcriminal charges for helping Americans dodge taxes, has created a "bad bank" unitfor US clients, Swiss media reported on Tuesday.According to Swiss daily Tages Anzeiger, the bank aims to drop all funds belongingto US citizens not residing in Switzerland, into a newly created bank called CSInternational Advisors AG, headquartered in Zurich and with its own separate banking licence.The bank, Switzerland's second-biggest, has reportedly been informing its off-shoreUS clients of the shift in recent days.Credit Suisse did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report.According to Tages Anzeiger though, the new bank is meant to shoulder the lionshare of the burden if Washington decides to press criminal charges and drag CreditSuisse to court.Peter Kunz, an economy professor at the University of Bern, told the paper CreditSuisse could expect the consequences of any future litigation to be "a bit lessserious" for the whole group once it implements the new system.A senior US official told AFP on Monday that the probe of Credit Suisse's pastpractice of helping its wealthy US clients evade taxes by sheltering their fundsabroad was almost complete and that criminal charges could be brought within "afew weeks."And the Wall Street Journal reported that Credit Suisse was about to reach anagreement with the Justice Department that would see it plead guilty and pay a $1.0billion fine.In 2009, Switzerland's largest bank UBS was forced to acknowledge it had used Swissbanking secrecy laws to help its US clients avoid paying taxes at home, and had todish out a $780-million fine to US tax authorities.Credit Suisse has put aside $895 million Swiss francs ($1.0 billion) to cover any USpotential fine. A damning Senate report found that the bank at its peak in 2006 had more than22,000 US customers with Swiss accounts whose assets stood as high as $12 billion --mainly undeclared to US tax authorities.Chief executive Brady Dougan apologised in February to US senators for the bank'sactions, conceding it had undertaken elaborate efforts to gain new, secret Americanclients, but blamed the wrongdoing on a small band of rogue employees.