Credit Suisse Ejects Client Ai Weiwei

Credit Suisse is closing the bank account of Fart Foundation, the nonprofit that Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei set up in 2016 to advocate for free speech. The Switzerland-based investment bank had given the exiled, Portugal-based artist a September deadline to transfer the funds elsewhere, Ai told Reuters, and explained that there is a new policy that terminates the accounts of people with criminal records. Ai, who has never been convicted of a crime, claims that Credit Suisse’s ambitions for business developments in China and his criticisms of Switzerland’s “hypocrisy” in succumbing to Chinese economic control were the real reasons for the decision, and lambasted the bank for its complicity in “foul commerce.”

Ai made these remarks in an op-ed article published by Artnet on September 6. In the text, he mentions a phone call with Credit Suisse’s management on June 24, when the bank allegedly cited his interview with the Swiss daily newspaper 20-Minuten on June 18 as the reason for his account’s closure. In the interview, Ai criticized the West for merely using China’s human-rights violations as bargaining chips in business deals, and slammed the Swiss people for voting to ban full facial coverings in public spaces, a law that effectively prohibits burqas and niqabs. The referendum passed in March with a narrow 51.2 percent majority. Ai proceeded to say, “If I can’t wear what I want in liberal Switzerland with all its so-called human rights, nobody should even set foot in this country,” and compared Switzerland with Nazi Germany. The interview prompted former Swiss colonel Roger E. Schärer to threaten Ai with a formal complaint. Schärer said in a follow-up interview, “Ai must not defame Switzerland so much, as the country showed him so much hospitality. Here he finds all the freedom that was denied him in China.” Ai’s statement was also criticized by Switzerland’s Federal Commission against Racism and Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism for minimizing the Holocaust.

In the same Artnet article, Ai also describes China’s bid for cultural influence, and bemoans that museums, including Hong Kong’s M+, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and London’s Tate Modern and Victoria and Albert Museum, are bending under Chinese pressure or “have rushed to cozy up to China.”

Credit Suisse has declined to comment on Ai’s allegations. As part of its sponsorship program, the bank primarily supports museums and institutions in Switzerland, including the Museo d’Arte Lugano, Kunst Museum Winterthur, Kunstmuseum Bern, Fondation de l’Hermitage, Kunsthaus Zürich, and Kunstmuseum Basel, as well as projects by the Swiss arts council Pro Helvetia. In 2014, Credit Suisse was fined USD 2.6 billion for facilitating tax evasion in operations that involved recruiting clients at Art Basel in Miami.

Pamela Wong is ArtAsiaPacific’s assistant editor. 

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