‘The battle has started’: Ex-Credit Suisse banker’s fraud victims still want an apology

It was December 30, 2015, and Russian businesswoman Olga Kurbatova, who founded a successful Moscow-based beverage company called Happyland Corp, was celebrating the New Year with her son when she got an unexpected phone call from the bank that managed her fortune, Credit Suisse. There had been a most unhappy mistake, she was told.

The bulk of the money she thought she had in what she called her “Dream Account” — $35 million — had been credited to her by mistake. It wasn’t actually hers. “For a few hours, I was wondering if it was a gag,” Kurbatova said recently, via a translator. “Then I went into a state of shock.”