Tensions between Swiss banks and the United States justice authorities should ease up in 2015, Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf has said on the sidelines of the joint International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings in Washington. The minister said she had received positive signals that this year would bring solutions to the conflict, a […]

The Department of Justice announced today that BSI SA, one of the 10 largest private banks in Switzerland, is the first bank to reach a resolution under the Department of Justice’s Swiss Bank Program. “Because of the department’s continuing efforts to root out offshore tax evasion, Swiss banks are operating much differently today than they […]

A major Swiss bank will pay $211 million in a deal to avoid prosecution on charges it secretly helped American clients evade U.S. taxes, the Department of Justice said Monday. The agreement with BSI SA makes the private bank the first to come clean under a federal program that encourages overseas banks to disclose their […]

Documents released by a Brazilian court have outlined the alleged use of Swiss bank accounts for the payment of bribes in the Petrobras scandal. Pedro Barusco, a former Petrobras executive and key witness in what is emerging as Brazil’s biggest graft case, said in a statement filed with a court in Parana that he laundered […]

The venerable Coutts bank, home of the Queen’s personal accounts, has been drawn into the mounting controversy about private banking with an admission that its Swiss arm is under investigation for aiding and abetting tax evasion. Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns the 300-year-old Coutts, admitted on Thursday that German prosecutors are investigating current and […]

The U.K. Serious Fraud Office secured its first criminal conviction under the Bribery Act, after two men were found guilty Friday of offenses under the 2011 law. The convictions came as part of an SFO probe into the promotion and sale of biofuel investment products to U.K. investors, the agency said in a statement. They […]

Swiss private bank Julius Baer is cooperating in a French investigation into suspected money laundering and tax fraud by a former client involved in the European carbon allowances market, a spokeswoman said, following French media reports. News agency AFP said last week the bank is suspected of receiving funds in a Swiss account that were […]

We have reported on the Justice Department’s program offered to Swiss banks and targeted to identifying U.S. taxpayers that have not disclosed foreign accounts to the IRS. [See prior posts here, here and here]. It has now been reported that one-third of all Swiss banks applied to the program. [See Swiss Banks Seek Tax Amnesty […]