Swiss authorities give France documents on 300 UBS customers

Switzerland has handed over to the French authorities documents on 300 customers of UBS AG suspected of evading tax, a Swiss newspaper said on Sunday. Citing no sources, the SonntagsZeitung newspaper said the documents had been sent to the judicial authorites in Paris in the last few weeks. It added the affected customers have not been informed.
A UBS spokesman declined to comment and referred Reuters to the relevant authorities. A spokesman for the Swiss Finance Ministry declined to comment. No one at the Paris prosecutor's office was immediately available for comment.
The delivery of the documents was made possible by a revision to the Swiss Tax Administrative Assistance Act that came into force on August 1 and makes it easier for other countries to extract information on suspected tax dodgers.
French investigating magistrates have proposed that UBS pay a fine of 4.88 billion euros ($6.16 billion) in an investigation into whether the Swiss bank helped wealthy French individuals evade tax, a judicial source told Reuters last week.