The shutdown of MBaer Merchant Bank can no longer be explained as a simple failure of internal controls. The decision by the Swiss regulator, followed by action from the U.S. Treasury, points to something deeper: the bank became entangled in an international money laundering network tied to Venezuelan corruption, the evasion of sanctions on PDVSA oil, and a web of operators led by Italian businessman Alessandro Bazzoni and his wife, Norwegian banker Siri Evjemo-Nysveen.
The final blow came when FinCEN, the U.S. Treasury’s financial crimes unit, proposed labeling MBaer as a “primary money laundering concern.” That move, combined with the withdrawal of its license by FINMA, pushed the bank into liquidation. According to the official notice, the institution had for years facilitated transactions for illicit actors and was “anchored in Venezuelan corruption.”
At the center of those allegations is Evjemo-Nysveen. According to the Treasury, the former vice-chair of MBaer used her position between 2020 and 2023 to process payments linked to a corruption scheme involving PDVSA. She allegedly did so on behalf of her husband, Alessandro Bazzoni, who was a minority shareholder in the bank and remained under U.S. sanctions at the time for his role as a key facilitator in a sanctions-evasion network.
Bazzoni was far from a peripheral figure. For years, he operated as one of the most active players in schemes that allowed Venezuelan crude to move outside formal channels. His name has been linked to operators such as Joaquín Leal Jiménez and José Luis Chávez Calva, both central figures in financial circuits that helped place Venezuelan oil in sanctioned markets. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned him in 2021, describing him as instrumental in supporting PDVSA and stepping into a role previously occupied by Alex Saab.
MBaer’s role in this network extended beyond Bazzoni himself. The bank also maintained accounts for key figures tied to these operations, including José Luis Chávez Calva, identified as a financial facilitator in laundering billions linked to Venezuela’s state oil company. In addition, Siri Evjemo-Nysveen oversaw the opening of accounts for Mexican operator Joaquín Leal Jiménez and Venezuelan figures such as Tareck El Aissami, Rafael Tellechea, Antonio Pérez Suárez, and Antonio González Morales. This list underscores how deeply MBaer became embedded not only in PDVSA-related activity, but also among its political and financial operators.
The Venezuelan connection reached into the very structure of the bank. Founded in 2018 by Michael Bär, great-grandson of the Julius Baer founder, MBaer positioned itself as a modern private bank. But it quickly opened its doors to high-risk clients and opaque financial flows. What was marketed as sophisticated international banking ultimately became, in the eyes of regulators, a platform vulnerable to laundering funds linked to Venezuela, as well as actors from Russia and Iran.
The story expands further when looking at the couple’s lifestyle — particularly their involvement in polo, which served as both a social platform and a potential channel for financial legitimization. Bazzoni and Evjemo-Nysveen were not just figures in finance; they were prominent in elite polo circles in the UK. He sponsored the Monterosso team, while she played with MT Vikings, moving comfortably through high-level tournaments even after Bazzoni had been sanctioned. In 2022, he played in a charity match alongside Prince William while still under U.S. sanctions.
In 2024, when the Financial Times reported on Bazzoni’s continued presence in English polo despite those sanctions, his lawyers denied any link between his sporting activities and Venezuelan oil money. They also dismissed estimates of his spending on teams, horses, and infrastructure as speculation. But by 2026, the issue had moved beyond reputational questions. The U.S. Treasury explicitly linked both Bazzoni and Evjemo-Nysveen to the use of MBaer to launder funds tied to PDVSA. Parallel investigations began examining whether polo itself — including the purchase and sale of high-value horses — had been used to move and legitimize illicit capital.
That contrast is telling. What was dismissed in 2024 as media exaggeration became, by 2026, part of an official investigation. Polo, long associated with financial elites, offered more than prestige. It provided an opaque, high-cost, cross-border environment where money, relationships, and assets could circulate with limited scrutiny. Maintaining professional teams, acquiring competition horses, and operating within exclusive clubs created a façade of legitimacy around individuals already under scrutiny.
The sequence of the bank’s collapse is equally revealing. First, MBaer quietly removed Evjemo-Nysveen from its board in 2023, just as the PDVSA-Crypto scandal erupted and figures linked to Tareck El Aissami fell from power. Then, FINMA concluded that the bank lacked adequate anti-money laundering controls. Finally, FinCEN moved to cut it off from the U.S. financial system — effectively sealing its fate.
Bazzoni and Evjemo-Nysveen deny all allegations. He maintains that he was vindicated when he was removed from the sanctions list and argues that the Treasury’s claims rely on discredited sources. She has not been criminally charged in Switzerland or the United States, according to their legal team. But the closure of MBaer and the contents of the FinCEN notice point to a difficult reality: U.S. authorities believe the bank was used to channel funds derived from Venezuelan oil corruption — and that the couple played a central role in that system.
The fall of MBaer is therefore not just the story of a poorly supervised bank. It is also the story of how a network born out of PDVSA’s looting found its way into European private banking, how it leveraged personal connections, shell companies, and high-risk clients to move money, and how that same network projected itself into elite environments — like English polo — to transform suspect capital into prestige, visibility, and influence.