Credit Suisse saga reveals ever present bank surveillance

NEW YORK: The scene: a street in Zurich. The mark: a wealthy Swiss banker. His pursuers: hired goons looking for intel.

It sounds like something ripped from John Le Carre. In fact, it’s reallife – and not all that unusual in the world of high finance.

News that Credit Suisse Group AG had hired private investigators to tail a star banker who’d defected to a rival has captivated the hushhush world of Swiss banking. The ensuing scandal has reached the very top of the firm and, in all likelihood, heads will roll.

Yet no one in finance should be under any illusions. Banks spy all the time. The only difference? Credit Suisse got caught, and publicly so.

Call it the banker-surveillance state – a phenomenon probably as old as banking itself. From Deutsche Bank AG to Spain’s BBVA and even Barclays Plc, firms have long turned to a range of techniques to gather corporate intelligence and protect their talent and client lists. But the line between safeguarding intellectual property and carrying out vendettas can, at times, be blurry.

“Surveilling employees who are getting ready to leave the company is a dog-eared page in the playbook,” said Mary Inman, a partner with law firm Constantine Cannon in London who specialises in employee whistle-blower cases. “What’s remarkable about the current situation is that it got so heated.”

Beyond the business-as-usual monitoring of emails and chats, banks often step up scrutiny of records once top employees leave.

Suspicions of wrongdoing can prompt forensic reviews of messages, documents and phone logs. Some banks hire external intelligence firms to scour public records for indications that the departing person may be gearing up to start a rival business – and possibly breach a non-compete or try to poach former colleagues.