Banking Career
Erdman returned to Switzerland where in 1965, he founded and was the president of a Swiss bank - the Salik Bank. In 1969, the United California Bank in California bought a majority stake and renamed it the United California Bank in Basel. The bank collapsed after taking large losses speculating in the cocoa market. Erdman and other board members were accused of fraud and Erdman spent time in jail awaiting trial. Several officers of his bank were convicted and served prison terms, much to the surprise of American readers, who were unaccustomed to seeing corporate executives jailed for the activities of their companies. In television interviews, Erdman has observed that Swiss prisons had better food (he could have meals sent in by hotels and restaurants of his choice) but Swiss laws did apply to the "privileged classes" as well as to ordinary mortals. The whole episode has been well documented in Chapter 4: How My Swiss Bank Blew $40 Million and Went Broke of the book Supermoney by George Goodman written under his pseudonym Adam Smith.
Read more about this topic: Paul Erdman
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