The announcement comes amid increased pressure on the Justice Department. $2.6 billion penalty for Credit Suisse

Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank, has agreed to plead guilty and pay more than $2.6 billion to settle charges it helped Americans bilk funds from U.S. coffers, the biggest criminal tax penalty ever.

The bank admitted that for decades it engaged in practices such as destroying documents and setting up sham accounts to help thousands of Americans dodge the tax man.


The deal comes amid increased pressure on the Justice Department to hold banks accountable for sketchy practices. DOJ has been blasted for failing to prosecute banks in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis — though Credit Suisse was not a major player — and for failing to vigorously pursue financial institutions that have acted as tax havens for the wealthy.

( Sign up for POLITICO’s Morning Money tip sheet)

“I can announce that Credit Suisse has agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges related to this pervasive illegal activity,” Attorney General Eric Holder said. “This is the largest bank to plead guilty in 20 years. The bank will pay a total of $1.8 billion in the form of a fine of over $1.13 billion and nearly $670 million in restitution to the IRS. They have admitted criminal wrongdoing.”

Responding to a question about prior comments Holder made that some banks were too big to prosecute, Holder said: “No bank is too big to jail.”

The bank’s CEO issued a statement expressing regret.

“Having this matter fully resolved is an important step forward for us,” said Brady Dougan, the American CEO of Credit Suisse.

But critics on Capitol Hill are not assuaged. Late on Monday, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), whose panel issued a scathing report on the bank earlier this year, said he has no idea why the deal does not include a list of American tax dodgers’ names.

( Also on POLITICO: Full finance policy coverage)

“It is a mystery to me why the U.S. government didn’t require as part of the agreement that the bank cough up some of the names of the U.S. clients with secret Swiss bank accounts,” Levin said.

“More than 20,000 Americans were Credit Suisse account holders in Switzerland, the vast majority of whom never disclosed their accounts as required by U.S. law. This leaves their identities undisclosed, with no accountability for taxes owed,” he said.

And Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) bristled that although the deal “might turn heads on Main Street ” they didn’t see any “top individuals held criminally liable.”

When asked about whether there would be more indictments of individuals, Deputy Attorney General James Cole would not respond.

So far, DOJ has indicted eight Credit Suisse bankers, two of which have pleaded guilty.

The announcement is the second landmark tax evasion deal Justice has made with a major Swiss bank for aiding tax evasion. But the latest one dwarfs the $780 million that UBS, the Alpine nation’s biggest bank, paid in 2009 after it admitted wrongdoing to settle similar charges.

Under that deal, UBS did provide names — though not as many as some wanted.

Cole said there’s a reason Credit Suisse is seeing a larger penalty than UBS, though the bank didn’t hide as much from the IRS as UBS did. The reason: They didn’t cooperate right away.

“It did not respond properly,” he said. “It allowed documents that could help our investigation be destroyed.”

Since the UBS settlement, DOJ has launched more than a dozen investigations into Swiss financial firms and is currently working with 100 additional Swiss banks seeking amnesty in return for admitting a role in helping Americans hide money from the IRS.

All told, the investigations in recent years have ushered more than 43,000 U.S. taxpayers into an IRS tax evasion amnesty program where Americans come clean with the government. They’ve paid about $6 billion in taxes and penalties.

Earlier this year, a Senate report by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations alleged that Credit Suisse helped rich Americans hide well over $10 billion in more than 22,000 accounts, using clandestine techniques such as remote-control elevators to hide clients visiting their Swiss bankers; stashing banking statements in Sports Illustrated magazines; and offering secret bank services in Swiss airports for quick access to cash.

That report said bankers took at least 150 trips to the U.S. from 2002 to 2008, under the guise of vacations and tourism, to woo clients at golf tournaments and tony gatherings in New York. Once hooked, they warned them to be quiet: no emails, no faxes, no written correspondence. Only verbal communication was allowed, and bank statements were destroyed upon being viewed by customers.

They encouraged Americans to withdraw their money in increments under $10,000 to circumvent reporting requirements to the U.S. Treasury, which is illegal.

The court documents filed Monday detail many of these same accusations. They tell of schemes used by the bank to hide Americans’ accounts, including use of a Credit Suisse trust to conceal accounts, managers helping Americans file fraudulent U.S. tax documents and false filings to the Federal Reserve.

The government says more than 400 managers participated in the schemes, which involved maneuvers like giving out offshore debit and credit cards to help Americans evade tax authorities.

During the UBS case in 2009, the department used a civil proceeding called a “John Doe summons” to get the names of more than 4,500 of the nearly 20,000 UBS U.S. account holders. But it has not yet done the same with Credit Suisse, and according to Levin’s report released in February, DOJ only has the names of around 230 tax cheaters from Credit Suisse.

When questioned about the actual account information, Cole simply said, “There’s going to be a substantial amount of information we’re going to get to enable us to find out who the account holders are.”

“They’re going to help us in treaty requests under Swiss law to get the specific names. … They’re providing us with a great deal of additional information that will allows us to determine where the accounts went, how many accounts they had, the size of the accounts,” he said.

Swiss law has been the biggest hurdle to getting tax cheaters’ names. Switzerland, which prides itself on its banking secrecy, has laws against disclosing account information, punishable by several years in prison. The nation also passed a law in 2012 creating a higher threshold for Justice Department requests for account information.

Credit Suisse was one of 14 Swiss banks being probed by federal prosecutors for tax evasion. Justice is also running an amnesty program for smaller financial institutions, allowing more than 100 banks to confess they enabled tax evasion in return for immunity from prosecution. Instead, the banks pay a fine and hand over data showing how much is in each account and where the money went.

In total, 75 account holders have been charged of tax evasion since 2009, 61 of whom have pleaded guilty.

More actions against other banks are expected in coming months, Cole said.