UBS Will No Longer Be Able to Contest Client Data Sent to France Tax Authorities
UBS will no longer be informed or be able to contest
customer data the Swiss tax authorities hand over to counterparties in France
investigating alleged tax avoidance, a Swiss court said on Wednesday.
Switzerland's Federal Administrative Court upheld a decision
to revoke UBS's position as a party to the arrangements over what information
to send to France.
Under a previous arrangement, the Swiss Federal Tax
Administration had allowed UBS to inspect the files and inform the bank of all
final decisions related to 40,000 UBS bank accounts requested by France. UBS
could also challenge the respective final decisions on what details to send.
But after UBS contested some of the decisions, the Swiss tax
authorities eventually ended the bank's involvement for the documents not
already supplied.
The bank appealed against the decision, which was rejected
by the Federal Administrative Court earlier this month.
"The Swiss Federal Tax Administration has rightly
revoked UBS's status as a party to the ongoing proceedings," the court
said in a judgment published on Wednesday.
The bank did not respond to a request for comment on
Wednesday.
Switzerland's highest court last year ruled that historical
data about 40,000 UBS clients must be handed to French tax authorities in a
landmark case, while blocking the use of the data against the bank itself.
In Wednesday's judgment, the court said UBS feared the data
could be used in the ongoing criminal cases against the bank in France, a
concern the court said was unfounded.
In February last year, a French court found UBS guilty of
illegally soliciting clients and laundering the proceeds of tax evasion and
ordered it to pay 4.5 billion euros ($5.13 billion) in penalties.
UBS has denied any wrongdoing and has appealed against the
ruling. Appeal proceedings are due to start next March.
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