Credit Suisse Group AG has filed a criminal complaint against a Zurich financial blog, ratcheting up a legal attack begun this week over readers’ comments attached to a series of stories it ran about the Swiss bank earlier this year.
(Bloomberg) — Credit Suisse Group AG has filed a criminal complaint against a Zurich financial blog, ratcheting up a legal attack begun this week over readers’ comments attached to a series of stories it ran about the Swiss bank earlier this year.
The complaint, which the blog Inside Paradeplatz confirmed on Friday, follows a 265-page civil lawsuit filed over comments that the bank said were harshly critical of it and some of its executives, in particular new chief executive officer Ulrich Koerner.
The Zurich-based bank previously argued that Inside Paradeplatz should have been more discriminating in choosing which comments to publish and filed a civil claim against the publisher for 300,000 Swiss francs ($322,000), demanding the retraction of parts of them. A criminal claim is much more serious as conviction for willful defamation under Swiss criminal law can result in a fine or up to three years in prison.
Credit Suisse declined to comment directly on the criminal complaint, and referred to an earlier comment that the bank had “decided to proceed with a legal review of the legality of reader comments and texts.”
“We are taking this step to protect our employees, who are regularly the subject of abusive and disparaging comments on the blog,” the bank said.
The Zurich Prosecutor’s Office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter.
The escalation in the case comes after a turbulent year for Credit Suisse that has seen wholesale changes in the management team amid a strategy revamp aimed at stabilizing the lender after years of losses and scandals. The bank has also been on the receiving end of legal losses including a criminal conviction for failing to prevent money laundering.
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