An international investigation has uncovered confidential documents of the Geneva-based Reyl Bank. They show that the bank has sheltered the wealth of several scandalous political leaders. Among them are oligarchs from the former Soviet Union. The investigation reveals that the bank did not comply with safeguards against money laundering. Reyl is currently under investigation by the Swiss banking regulator.

The bank manages a portfolio worth several million Swiss francs on behalf of the family of Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev. It holds several tens of millions of Swiss francs for Dinara Kulibayeva, daughter of former Kazakh autocrat Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Timur Tilyaev, son-in-law of former Uzbek President Islam Karimov. By 2023, Reyl also counts among its clients Leonid Reiman, a former minister and adviser to Vladimir Putin named in several investigations into large-scale abuses, and opens its coffers to figures linked to the Calabrian mafia.

Last November, former federal adviser Ruth Metzler made headlines when she took over the leadership of the Swiss Olympic Committee. By contrast, her discreet departure from Geneva's Reyl bank three months earlier went unnoticed. Not for long. New information has emerged today about the eight-year period the former justice minister spent on the bank's board of directors. Some of it is damning. From its luxurious headquarters in Geneva on Rue Ron "Reyl", it manages some 15 billion Swiss francs for an international clientele. In recent years, the bank has been under constant scrutiny by the Swiss financial watchdog FINMA. During its investigations, the watchdog found "numerous weaknesses" and a "very high risk" of money laundering at Reyl. At issue were millions of mafiosi, politically vulnerable Russians and Central Asian autocrats. These are the findings of an extensive FINMA report. They were obtained by a group of international journalists.

BGNES news agency has taken a look at the banking regulator's investigations into Reyl. FINMA's criticism directly concerns Ruth Metzler. As a member of the board of directors, her task was to supervise the bank and remove problem customers. Since 2021, she has sat on a committee responsible for good governance at the bank.

Ruth Metzler declined to comment because she was bound by "confidentiality commitments" with Reyl. For its part, the bank announced that it had filed a complaint against unidentified individuals, as an "aggrieved party," for breach of bank secrecy. This was done "in order to protect the institution and its customers".

"Reyl is cooperating fully with the supervisory authorities and gives the highest priority to compliance with all applicable regulations," the bank said. Since its takeover by Italian giant Intesa Sanpaolo in 2021, Reyl says it has strengthened its anti-money laundering systems. "Relationships with high-risk categories of customers were carefully scrutinised and, where necessary, terminated," the bank added.

According to lawyer Monica Roh, the verdict is clear: "It's not a pretty picture. It appears that the bank has behaved badly for years." She said the conduct of the board of directors, the body tasked with overseeing the management of the company, was to blame. "One of its most important duties is to ensure that rules are followed in the day-to-day running of the bank. This has not always been the case."

In November 2016, the former justice minister, ousted from the Federal Council in 2003 to make way for Christoph Blocher, joined Reyl. "We are delighted to welcome Ruth Metzler-Arnold to our Board of Directors," says Dominique Reyl, chairman and founder of the private bank. "She will bring her first-class experience and skills to the development, control and success of the Group."

The aim is also to secure political support for the bank. Shortly after the former minister's arrival, Reil was convicted in France of receiving undeclared funds from French budget minister Jerome Cahuzac. François Reil, son of the bank's founder and director, received a suspended sentence of one year in prison and a fine of 375,000 euros. The appointment of Ruth Metzler to the board is a way of signalling that the bank is now striving to be free of wrongdoing.

In 2021, Reyl sold two-thirds of its capital to the large Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo. FINMA then revealed the first problematic transaction.

In 2013, Reyl accepted more than €8 million in cash from an Italian client who claimed to have inherited it. The man was later sentenced to two years in prison for laundering the funds of a mafia family.

In 2023, FINMA sent a letter of reprimand to the bank. It noted "clear indications of violations" in the fight against money laundering. However, it decided not to impose any sanctions, mainly because the facts had not been known for a long time. It seems that FINMA did not know that "Reyl" also had the head of this mafia clan as a client. This woman, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison in Italy in 2023, rented safe No. 64 from "Reyl" in Lugano. In February 2018, Swiss police found jewelry, gold coins, luxury watches and documents in the safe. This is according to Italian court documents and leaks published on the "dark web". Ruth Metzler bears no responsibility for this moment, which preceded her arrival at Reyl. However, the bank's problems do not stop there.

The war in Ukraine and Russian millions

In the summer of 2022, a few months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Reyl opened an account for Alexander Ponomarenko's daughter. He was close to the Russian government and ran a Moscow company that actively supported the war. His mistress became his client shortly afterwards. Tens of millions of euros belonging to the two women ended up in the bank. Why were these politically connected Russians welcomed by the bank in the middle of the war? The bank's management pressured its employees to do so, FINMA investigations show.

In November 2022, one of Reyl's senior managers sent a threatening email to employees who were checking customers' accounts before and after acceptance. This senior manager was concerned about the "file" of the two Russian clients. He wanted to make sure they "took into account everything that had been passed on to mitigate the issues they had uncovered". This "gossip" from the Russian press concerned embezzlement by the Ponomarenko family. According to Monika Roth, such interference by the bank's management is absolutely unacceptable. "Compliance officers should be able to say no without fear of repercussions," she stresses. The admission of the two Russians implied "a very high appetite for risk [...] as well as a certain degree of recklessness", FINMA later wrote to Reyl's management and board of directors.

2022: Conflict of interest

At the time, a five-person committee unanimously decided who could open an account at Reyl. Director François Reyl was on the committee, as were two representatives of the responsible department. In February 2023, he offered to take on a new client. The latter was a banker convicted in the first instance in a tax evasion case. Bank officials were skeptical and abstained from voting. The Committee decided to accept the client anyway.

In September 2023, FINMA wrote that "the decision of the three remaining members of the committee to disregard the issues constituted [...] a clear and deliberate violation of the organizational bylaws. This case illustrates the disregard shown by the Bank's management for the views of the supervisory representatives". In September 2023, FINMA wrote to the bank to highlight "the risk inherent in your business model" and the "numerous weaknesses identified". The bank was classified as "very high risk" - the highest of FINMA's five categories.

Among the "weaknesses," FINMA notes that Reyl failed to verify the accounts of about 1,400 customers over a five-year period. It allowed 5,000 alerts to accumulate about risky transactions that were not processed for two months or more. FINMA also found conflicts of interest at the top of the bank. François Reil is not only its charismatic boss, but also the manager of its biggest clients. In 2023, he directly managed 228 clients representing about CHF 1.2 billion, or about 8% of total assets.

As an asset manager, François Reil would have a vested interest in ensuring that his potential clients are taken on by the bank. In principle, the more clients an asset manager has, the more money he makes. As a director, François also had the power to "force" the admission of specific clients. FINMA had been alerted to this problem. "We invite you [...] to analyse the root causes of this lack of checks and balances in the management team," it wrote to Reyl's directors in September 2023. For the expert Monica Roth, it is incomprehensible that the bank's management did not take François Reyl's excessive power into account. "It was the duty of the board of directors to prevent it. And it should have done so immediately, not years later," she says.

Millions from autocrats

A hacking attack on a financial company in Zurich revealed that Reil had accounts belonging to the Russian Ponomarenko family. FINMA has launched a new investigation, the third since 2021. It has been entrusted to its enforcement department, which intervenes when there is concrete evidence that the law has been broken. Its investigators are finding new high-risk clients. Accounts linked to former telecoms minister and later adviser to Vladimir Putin, Leonid Reimann, had 81 million Swiss francs at Reyl in autumn 2023. In 2006, an arbitration court in Zurich found that this Russian had made a vast fortune from his ministerial functions. The federal court also ruled that a fund linked to the minister had committed "money laundering".

The foreign media also revealed other politically vulnerable clients of the bank. The son-in-law of Uzbekistan's former dictator has invested more than 80 million Swiss francs in Reyl. The daughter of the former president of Kazakhstan, who owns the opulent Château de Bellerive in Geneva, had around 150 million francs in Reyl. The Geneva courts are currently investigating this case.

Perhaps the most sensitive connection is with Azerbaijan, an oil-rich country ruled for over thirty years by the family of President Ilham Aliyev.

In early 2024, FINMA questioned "Reyl" about her relationship with a French-Swiss lawyer who lived in a lavishly renovated chateau in the countryside of Vaud. The patron and art lover has been the manager of the Alievs' personal fortune for more than a decade. An Azerbaijani journalist has been jailed for exposing the Panamanian structures he runs on behalf of the family.

When questioned, Reil told FINMA that he counted the lawyer's asset management company among his clients. According to him, "people connected to the managing family in Azerbaijan" had invested in funds that had deposited more than CHF 400 million with Reyl. The bank says it only discovered this in 2021. Who are these people "connected to the ruling family in Azerbaijan"? Are they close relatives of the autocrat? That remains unclear to this day.

2024: Withdrawals and resignations

On 22 March 2024, Reyl announces that François Reyl is stepping down as a director and joining the board of directors. The bank also dismisses the asset manager who brought in the two Russian clients in 2022. His boss, who intervened on their behalf, remains on the job. It is not known at what stage FINMA's investigations into the bank are. The watchdog declined to answer specific questions about the case.

As for Ruth Metzler, she continues to hold a number of key positions after leaving Reyl last summer. In addition to her chairmanship of Swiss Olympic, she sits on the boards of the Swiss Vatican Guard, the liberal Avenir Suisse club, insurer AXA and the Swiss Medical Network, which owns the Genolier clinic.

"Reyl does not publicly disclose the salaries or remuneration of its directors. According to experts in the field, a directorship in a bank of this type enjoys around 50,000 Swiss francs a year for a few days' work that sometimes involves a great deal of preparation. In eight years at Reyl, Ruth Metzler was able to take home at least around 400 000 Swiss francs. I BGNES