Corporate espionage: Spy scandal at Credit Suisse, COO resigns after failed spy operation on other executive.

Sounding much like a John le Carré novel, the COO of Credit Suisse resigns after a failed spy operation on a former executive, and the contractor who hired the spies has commited suicide.

Chief Operating Officer at Credit Suisse Pierre-Olivier Bouee, after ordering investigators to spy on former executive Iqbal Khan. Allegedly he wanted to ensure that Khan did not poach and clients or brokers for his new position at UBS Group AG.

Bouee falls on his sword, resigning after claiming that he acted alone and did not inform the CEO or the board of his actions.

New York Times reports:

In August, Mr. Bouée ordered the Swiss bank’s head of security services to track Iqbal Khan, its head of wealth management, who was leaving after a personal disagreement with [CEO] Mr. Thiam. Outside investigators were hired to follow Mr. Khan and see if he was trying to poach employees or clients in breach of his Credit Suisse contract.

But the investigation turned messy after a confrontation between Mr. Khan and a corporate spook outside a Zurich restaurant in mid-September.

Mr. Khan, who had left Credit Suisse weeks earlier, submitted a criminal complaint about the encounter, and Zurich’s public prosecutor now is investigating. The Swiss Justice Department also is looking into the death of a security expert involved in the surveillance, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement Tuesday. The office said it was examining the circumstances.

Bloomberg reports:

Events took on an even more dramatic turn just before the bank’s announcement, when it emerged that a contractor hired to recruit the investigative agency took his own life. The man — known only as T — died last Tuesday, according to Thomas Fingerhurth, a lawyer for detective agency Investigo. Zurich prosecutors and police are now conducting further investigations to “clarify the circumstances surrounding the death.”

The bank said its investigation also didn’t find any evidence that Khan had attempted to poach employees. Homburger, the law firm charged with investigating the case, didn’t look into the private falling out of [CEO] Thiam and Khan and said some correspondence had been deleted.