Déviance et patriotisme : les malversations des banques soviétiques à l’international et les contours flous des normes financières. L’effondrement de la banque soviétique à Zurich, 1982-1986

Abstract

This article investigates patterns, practices, and actors of corporate (mal-)practices of rogue banking in Soviet international banking and how this experience may have influenced post-Soviet market behavior. A micro-level study of rogue banking at the Soviet bank in Zurich in the mid-1980s shows that Soviet and Swiss authorities reacted technocratically to the phenomenon. The Soviet international bankers’ perception of the superiority of Western governance led them to frame some forms of transgression as acceptable in the name of the Soviet state’s economic interest. The article refines the narrative of Soviet and post-Soviet informal practices as grounded in the Soviet planned economy by showing that the Soviet capitalist experience also had a role to play. The article concludes that the way in which corporate and institutional stakeholders treat risk-taking and transgressions has characteristics that transcend systemic differences. The investigation is shaped by a corpus of mostly primary archival sources and interviews.