A former Swiss bank chief, accused of illegally pocketing millions and visiting strip clubs on company expenses, has been jailed for nearly four years, the ATS news agency reported Wednesday.
Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse said Thursday that its exposure to Russia totalled over $900 million at the end of last year, with "minimal" links to individuals sanctioned over the Ukraine war.
As the Swiss banking sector is rocked by yet another scandal, with the publication of damaging allegations against Credit Suisse by international media, reactions in Switzerland have ranged from outrage to defensiveness.
The EU removed Switzerland and four other
countries from its grey list of tax havens on Thursday, giving one of the global hubs for multinational tax schemes the all clear.
Dominant digital currency bitcoin should not be allowed to become the Swiss bank account of the modern era used to hide illicit activity, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday.
Swiss banks are more satisfied about their performance and bullish than a year ago despite concerns over the impact evaporating banking secrecy could have on their balance sheets, a survey says.
Switzerland's banking sector, facing the end of the secrecy that was once the bedrock of its business, is turning to China as it seeks new markets for the future.
Many of Germany's rich, powerful and famous have hit trouble recently, not because of drugs or sexual escapades, but because the taxman has found out about their Swiss bank accounts.
Three hundred or so Swiss banks had until the end of Monday to decide whether to hand over records to Washington, in a bid to skirt US legal action for assisting American tax dodgers.
Swiss banks paid just over $6 million last year to the heirs of people who left dormant accounts under a system created after a scandal over money left by Jews during the Second World War.
Credit Suisse faces a penalty of $1.2 billion (1.1 billion francs) from US authorities over cases of tax evasion involving American clients, a Swiss lawyer estimates.
Switzerland, currently in the process of restituting assets to several former autocratic countries, is working on a new law aimed at simplifying the process of freezing and unblocking such funds, the government said on Wednesday.
Bayern Munich's president Uli Hoeness, at the centre of a German tax evasion scandal, was temporarily arrested last month during a search of his home and released on bail worth five million euros ($6.5 million), said a media report on Tuesday.
The president of German football club Bayern Munich, Uli Hoeness, may have used a Swiss bank account to hide more than €10 million ($13 million) from tax authorities, according to a Sunday media report.
Hundreds of German tax inspectors launched nationwide raids on Tuesday, based on 40,000 data sets on suspected tax-dodgers in Swiss banks from a CD authorities had bought for €4 million ($5.3 million), officials said.
Switzerland's supreme court on Thursday ordered Austrian bank UniCredit to pay Germany over 254 million euros ($333 million) to end a legal battle dating back to the fall of the Berlin Wall two decades ago.
Amid a massive scandal involving France's former budget minister and an undeclared Swiss bank account, Swiss banks are more eager than ever to kick out tax cheats and clear their names, bankers and industry experts say.
A Spanish man in his 50s suspected of involvement in a money-laundering operation was arrested with €1.8 million in cash on the Zurich-Paris train, according to media reports over the weekend.
<p><span class="il">Switzerland</span> is to allow banks to hand over to the United States the names of any employees who may have helped American clients evade taxes, a Swiss newspaper reported on Saturday.</p>
<p>Swiss lawmakers on Monday approved a revised tax accord with the United States that eases banking secrecy rules, allowing Washington to obtain details of tax cheats from Swiss banks with greater ease.</p>
<p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">The two sons of deposed Egyptian president Hosni<span class="il"> Mubarak</span> have $340 million in Swiss bank accounts, Egypt's deputy justice minister said on Monday.</span></p>
