Swiss bank chief profited by dollar trades

Friday, 6 January 2012 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

GENEVA: A Swiss political weekly says Swiss National Bank chief Philipp Hildebrand personally engaged in profitable currency deals previously thought to have been conducted by his wife, a claim that could increase the pressure on him to step down.

Hildebrand has yet to comment on the case, which first became public when the SNB issued an unprompted statement Dec 23 declaring that ``rumors’’ of wrongdoing by its 48-year-old president were unfounded and its rules against insider trading weren’t breached.

A Swiss central bank spokeswoman, Silvia Oppliger, declined to comment Wednesday on the latest report. The Zurich-based Weltwoche weekly said it has obtained bank statements showing that Hildebrand himself bought large amounts of US dollars before selling them for profit, after his central bank depressed the value of the Swiss franc.

``We have all the bank statements showing the relevant transactions, plus a verbal assurance from a bank employee confirming that it was Hildebrand personally, not his wife, who ordered the transactions,’’ Weltwoche’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief Philipp Gut told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Gut declined to identify the bank employee, but said he was a client adviser at Bank Sarasin. The Basel-based private bank said it has fired an IT support employee who leaked confidential information about ``currency transactions by the family of the president of the Swiss National Bank.’’

Gut said he didn’t known if the fired employee and the Weltwoche source were the same person.