Credit Suisse COO resigns over spying of Iqbal Khan

REUTERS/Ruben Sprich

• Credit Suisse announced on its website this morning that its COO, Pierre-Olivier Bouee, would be resigning from the post effective immediately over his role in a spying saga. 
• The bank has been embroiled in controversy after reports that a former executive, Iqbal Khan, had been spied on by Credit Suisse over fears he was luring staff away to UBS. 
• In the statement, UBS said Bouee acted alone “in order to protect the interests of the bank” and that ” the observation of Iqbal Khan was wrong and disproportionate.”
• On Tuesday, reports said that a Credit Suisse contractor who hired Investigo, the firm that carried out the investigation into Khan, had been found dead by suicide. 
• Here’s a full timeline of the Credit Suisse spying scandal.

Credit Suisse announced Tuesday morning that its COO, Pierre-Olivier Bouee, would be resigning as COO effective immediately for his role in a spying saga that has plagued the bank in the last few weeks. 

In a statement online, the Swiss bank’s board of directors said that “the observation of Iqbal Khan was wrong and disproportionate and has resulted in severe reputational damage to the bank.”

Another development on Tuesday: Swiss financial blog Inside Paradeplatz reported that a Credit Suisse contractor who hired Investigo, the firm that carried out the investigation into Khan, had been found dead by suicide. 

The drama kicked off late last month, when the Financial Times had reported that the bank had been spying on Iqbal Khan, a former executive who moved to UBS, over fears that he was luring away some of the bank’s employees to its rival. Khan is due to begin working for UBS on Tuesday.

The Credit Suisse contractor killed himself on Tuesday, Thomas Fingerhurth, the lawyer for security firm Investigo, reportedly said.

Read more: Spies, suicide, and a clash at a cocktail party — here’s what we know about the scandal rocking Credit Suisse

The bank’s statement said Bouee had ordered its head of global security to observe Iqbal Khan, and he had done so in “in order to protect the interests of the bank,” and did not discuss it with the rest of the board. 

The statement also said that there was no “indication that the CEO had approved the observation of Iqbal Khan nor that he was aware of it prior to September 18, 2019, after the observation had been aborted.”

The bank also said it found no “evidence that Iqbal Khan had attempted to poach employees or clients away from Credit Suisse, contrary to his contractual obligations.”

Bouee, who was one of CEO Tidjane Thiam’s closest allies at the bank, will be replaced by James Walker, who prior to this was CFO of some of Credit Suisse’s US subsidiaries and head of product control. “