Two of the world’s biggest banks, facing the threat of criminal charges, are mounting final bids for leniency.
To avoid the fallout from pleading guilty — no giant bank has done so in more than two decades — BNP Paribas and Credit Suisse made last-ditch appeals to prosecutors and regulators in recent weeks, according to people briefed on the talks. The private meetings came after prosecutors sought guilty pleas from the parent companies of both banks: BNP of France over doing business with countries like Sudan that the United States has blacklisted, and Credit Suisse for offering tax shelters to wealthy Americans.
While BNP and Credit Suisse proposed more modest guilty pleas from their subsidiaries rather than parent companies, the people briefed on the talks said, prosecutors appeared to balk at those overtures, challenging broader public concerns that banks have grown so important to the economy that they are effectively “too big to jail.”
In the case of Credit Suisse, which recently created a subsidiary to house the “U.S. offshore business,” prosecutors have privately indicated that they are unwilling to charge the newly formed unit. The bank is now expected to strike a deal with prosecutors as soon as this week, the people briefed on the talks said.
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