Don’t Tread on Me: Has the United States Government’s Quest for Customer Records from UBS Sounded the Death Knell for Swiss Bank Secrecy Laws?

21 Pages Posted: 23 Mar 2010

See all articles by Bradley J. Bondi

Bradley J. Bondi

Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP; Georgetown University Law Center; George Mason University - School of Law

Date Written: March 17, 2010

Abstract

Privacy protection is a defining characteristic of Swiss culture and a pillar of the Swiss economy. For centuries, the Swiss people have coveted the principles of individual privacy, regularly reaffirming those principles in response to referendums designed to limit them. Swiss banking secrecy, one aspect of privacy, is protected by Swiss criminal and civil laws and professional duties. Swiss banks pride themselves on protecting customer identity and have leveraged their legal and cultural commitment to secrecy to gain a competitive advantage in the global banking market. As of March 2009, Swiss banks held an estimated $2 trillion in foreign assets, which amounted to 27% of global assets held abroad.

In early 2009, the foundation of the Swiss banking industry was shaken – if not cracked – by events occurring halfway around the world in the United States. Federal prosecutors in the United States alleged that Swiss banking giant UBS aided Americans in committing criminal tax fraud. Under intense pressure by United States prosecutors and with the reluctant acquiescence of the Swiss banking regulator, UBS entered into a deferred prosecution agreement in which it paid a fine of $780 million and agreed to disclose the identities of, and account information for, 250 to 300 United States customers of UBS’s cross-border business. Following UBS’s transfer of the account information, Switzerland’s president, Hans-Rudolf Merz, announced to the world that “[b]anking secrecy. . . remains intact” and that the Swiss government will not relent in protecting confidential bank accounts.

The next day, however, the United States government made a surprising move by filing a lawsuit against UBS to enforce an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) summons from July 1, 2008, that would force UBS to reveal the names of 52,000 American customers. UBS had been specifically permitted under the deferred prosecution agreement to challenge the July 1, 2008, IRS summons, and UBS immediately indicated that it would do so. On the eve of a showdown in federal court, UBS and the United States government announced on July 31, 2009 that they had reached an agreement in principle to resolve the pending dispute by UBS providing information for approximately 9% of the 52,000 account holders sought. Commentators opined that production of information for the majority of the 52,000 names would have amounted to the end of Swiss bank secrecy. IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman said the agreement “blows a big hole in bank secrecy.” The Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger called the UBS affair “the death knell” for Swiss banking secrecy.

This brief Article discusses the Swiss banking laws that prohibit a Swiss bank from disclosing client information even if those Swiss laws are at odds with United States law. The Article then provides an overview of the UBS matter. Finally, the Article briefly analyzes the UBS dispute over the account information under a conflicts of law framework to hypothesize on the outcome had the matter been decided by the court. Analyzing the UBS dispute may prove useful in predicting the outcome of inevitable future disputes between the United States government and global banks over confidential client information.

Keywords: Swiss Banking Law, tax evasion, tax avoidance, internal revenue service, IRS, I.R.S., UBS, U.B.S., tax, tax havens, Organisation for Economic Co-operation, Swiss Federal Council, OECD, Swiss Federal Banking Act, Swiss Banking Secrecy, Swiss Bank Secrecy, Switzerland, Birkenfeld, Weil, FINMA

JEL Classification: K33, K34, K14, K22, K23, E50, E58, E59, G21, G24, G28

Suggested Citation

Bondi, Bradley Joseph, Don’t Tread on Me: Has the United States Government’s Quest for Customer Records from UBS Sounded the Death Knell for Swiss Bank Secrecy Laws? (March 17, 2010). Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2010, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1573982

Bradley Joseph Bondi (Contact Author)

Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP ( email )

Washington, D.C.
New York, New York
United States
202-862-8910 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.cahill.com/professionals/bradley-bondi

Georgetown University Law Center ( email )

600 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC

George Mason University - School of Law

3301 Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22201
United States

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