The international deal that saved the Swiss bank UBS from investigation for aiding massive tax evasion in the US has been thrown into confusion after Switzerland’s lower house of parliament rejected a plan to hand over thousands of customer details to American tax authorities.
The international deal that saved the Swiss bank UBS from investigation for aiding massive tax evasion in the US has been thrown into confusion after Switzerland’s lower house of parliament rejected a plan to hand over thousands of customer details to American tax authorities.
The vote in the National Council threatens to delay the deal beyond the August deadline set by Washington, re-opening the possibility that UBS could find itself fighting a civil lawsuit in a US court and demands to disclose the names of 52,000 account-holders.
UBS has already paid $780m (£543m) and handed over details of hundreds of disputed client accounts in return for a deferred prosecution agreement, but a deal negotiated between the Swiss and US governments covered a further 4,450 suspicious accounts, details of which were disclosed by UBS to regulators in Berne but not to the US authorities.
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