PUK investigates complaint about leak – report puts Ueli Maurer under pressure

The eagerly awaited PUK report on the collapse of Credit Suisse is due to be published in November. A draft is currently available to all those involved, as the “SonntagsZeitung” reports. This was supposed to be done in the greatest secrecy, but some information was leaked.

As the “SonntagsZeitung” writes, the report will also take a closer look at former Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer, who is said to have lied to his colleagues and held secret meetings instead of following protocol.

A parliamentary commission of inquiry (PUK) is currently investigating the background and responsibilities of an incident that has not yet been specified. The commission is close to completing its investigations. The final report is being prepared in strict secrecy.

No details have been published so far, but the information leak occurred over the weekend, which led to the first contents becoming public. It is unclear who the mole is. The next commission meeting is expected to decide whether to file a criminal complaint, according to the CH Media newspapers.

Following the PUK report, the CS problem was discussed in the Federal Council on November 2, 2022. The bank had recently experienced a bank run in which it lost over 80 billion francs. At the Federal Council meeting, Maurer and National Bank President Thomas Jordan raised the alarm about the bank’s condition.

According to a rescue plan, the National Bank could have immediately provided 50 billion francs in liquidity. The federal government would have had to guarantee an additional 100 billion, which would apparently be necessary, by emergency law. A meeting was scheduled for November 4 to conclude the rescue plan.

However, on the day in between, November 3, Maurer spoke with CS President Axel Lehmann. He did not want to reveal any federal aid. Maurer then cancelled the Federal Council meeting on November 4. He apparently made it clear to his colleagues that another solution had been found, as the “SonntagsZeitung” writes. He did not go into detail about what this solution would look like.

Maurer himself questions whether he actually thought that everything was OK, as he has since said at a public event hosted by the news portal “Inside Paradeplatz” that at that point he no longer believed that CS could be saved.

Furthermore, the PUK report apparently records how secret meetings took place regularly from the end of October until Maurer’s resignation at the end of 2022. Ueli Maurer, Axel Lehmann and Thomas Jordan took part. Apparently no one else was informed about this, neither the Federal Council nor the CS management. There are also no minutes of the meetings.

After the rescue of UBS in 2008, committees were set up to coordinate the activities of the authorities in the event of a crisis. These included the Financial Crisis Committee, FINMA, the Vice President of the National Bank and the responsible State Secretary, as well as the Director of the Financial Administration. The higher authority is the Steering Committee for Financial Crises, which includes the Finance Minister, the President of the SNB and the President of FINMA. These committees were bypassed by the secret meetings.

After taking over the finance department, Karin Keller-Sutter ended the unofficial meeting. Before Christmas, Maurer is said to have informed the then Federal President Cassis that the bank had been stabilized.