Swiss attempts to try to get a US tax investigation against its banks dropped are floundering with the launch of a US probe into Credit Suisse seen as a bid to turn up the pressure, a newspaper reported on Saturday. Citing unnamed banking sources, the Tages-Anzeiger daily said that negotiations between Switzerland and the United States had stalled because the US Department of Justice was not particularly interested in a deal.
--- US wants Swiss to hand over data of thousands of bank clients
The newspaper said the department was convinced it had enough evidence against Credit Suisse to force it to reveal client data, as it did in the case of UBS AG,which paid a fine of $780 million in 2009 to avoid criminal charges. Credit Suisse said on Friday it was being targeted by the department as part of a broader investigation into banks suspected of helping Americans evade taxes.
The Tages-Zeitung said this was being interpreted in Switzerland as a way to increase the pressure given the sluggish negotiations and said the US authorities were demanding the release of details of 6,000 to 8,000 secret Swiss accounts of US citizens. Last month, sources told Reuters the talks had become bogged down due to Swiss insistence that any deal leave Swiss bankers free from prosecution in the United States. Any deal would involve the United States dropping its investigation in return for the banks paying a fine, exiting their undeclared offshore banking businesses for Americans, and turning over client names to the Internal Revenue Service.
Other companies involved in the probe include HSBC, Europe's largest bank; Julius Baer, a private bank based in Zurich; and Basler Kantonalbank. Peter V. Kunz, professor for economic law at Bern University, said a Swiss court ruling on Friday that the financial markets regulator FINMA was right to order the handing over to US authorities of UBS client data in 2009 weakened the Swiss negotiating position.
"The federal supreme court judgement could in future be an invitation for the US authorities to go for Switzerland at full steam," he told the Tages-Anzeiger. "The United States could say to themselves, with enough pressure we will get client data from Switzerland again."
The Swiss supreme court overruled a lower court decision that the data transfer had been unlawful for violating strict Swiss bank secrecy, arguing that it had been necessary to save UBS from a criminal investigation that could have prompted it to go bust. Bank secrecy has come under attack in recent years amid a global campaign against offshore tax havens, forcing Switzerland to weaken its laws and pledge to cooperate more to help hunt tax cheats.