Credit Suisse files complaint against Zurich financial blog

Bloomberg

Credit Suisse Group AG has filed a criminal complaint against a Zurich financial blog, ratcheting up a legal attack begun over readers’ comments attached to a series of stories it ran about the Swiss bank earlier this year.
The complaint, which the blog Inside Paradeplatz confirmed, follows a 265-page civil lawsuit filed over comments that the bank said were harshly critical of it and some of its executives, in particular new chief executive officer Ulrich Koerner.
The Zurich-based bank previously argued that Inside Paradeplatz should have been more discriminating in choosing which comments to
publish and filed a civil claim against the publisher for 300,000 Swiss francs ($322,000), demanding the retraction of parts of them.
A criminal claim is much more serious as conviction for willful defamation under Swiss criminal law can result in a fine or up to three years in prison.
Credit Suisse declined to comment directly on the criminal complaint, and referred to an earlier comment that the bank had “decided to proceed with a legal review of the legality of reader comments and texts.”
“We are taking this step to protect our employees, who are regularly the subject of abusive and disparaging
comments on the blog,” the bank said.