Credit Suisse Ejects Client Ai Weiwei
By Pamela Wong
Portrait of AI WEIWEI. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
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.”
