Switzerland forces UBS to hand over French accounts

Swiss bank UBS has been ordered by Switzerland’s tax authorities to hand France details of present and former French citizens who held accounts with it and it said it expects other countries to make similar requests.

The demand follows a clamp-down on tax evasion by enforcers in the US, Germany and France in the wake of the financial crisis.

“The request concerns a number of UBS account numbers pertaining to present and former French domiciled clients and is based on data from 2006 and 2008,” UBS said. “Since then, the client base underlying the data has changed significantly and a large number of the accounts affected by the French request are closed.”

The bank said it had expressed concerns to Switzerland’s Federal Tax Administration that the legal basis for the request was “ambiguous at best,” and that the data and the justification received as part of the request “lack the required specificity”.

It added that it would test the “admissibility of the administrative assistance request” in the Swiss Federal Administrative Court.

French authorities placed UBS under formal examination over allegedly helping clients to evade tax and it was forced to pay $780 million (£590 million) to US authorities in 2009 to avoid indictment.

UBS said it had largely completed a compliance programme with clients based in Europe, including France.