Credit Suisse is fined for helping a Bulgarian drug ring launder money, a court said. The bank, which has been struggling with losses and management turmoil, said it would appeal the decision by a Swiss court. By Jack Ewing June 27, 2022 Cash in Cases The former Credit Suisse employee brought at least one Bulgarian customer, who was an associate of Banev, with her when she joined Credit Suisse in 2004, prosecutors allege in the indictment. The customer, who was later shot dead as he left a restaurant with his wife in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2005, had begun placing suitcases full of cash in a safe deposit box at Credit Suisse, the indictment says. Prosecutors alleged the gang used a practice known as smurfing, whereby a large sum of money is broken down into smaller amounts that are below the anti-money laundering alert threshold, to launder money, putting millions of euros in small-value bills into safety deposit boxes and later transferring them into accounts. The defendants said this was standard practice at the time the deposits were made, although Swiss private banks have since adopted much tougher anti-money laundering know-your-client checks after international pressure. The prosecutors alleged the former relationship manager, who left Credit Suisse in 2010 after being detained for two weeks by police in 2009, helped conceal the criminal origins of money for the clients by carrying out more than 146 million Swiss francs in transactions, including 43 million francs in cash