Swiss Court Denies Appeal by UBS' French Clients
Swiss judges denied an appeal by wealthy clients of UBS in France against a handover of their data to French tax officials.
The court ruling addresses a four-year-old legal aid request
by France, which is looking to root out undeclared money held in offshore Swiss
accounts. Specifically, French investigators want information from Switzerland
on roughly 40,000 accounts. Switzerland agreed to do so, but this simply set of
a lengthy court battle on behalf of five clients to block their data from being
handed over.
Switzerland's federal administrative court recently denied
their objections, in a ruling made public on Thursday, according to Swiss media
AWP.
The five plaintiffs have argued that French request for
legal assistance to be a so-called fishing expedition, or an unsubstantiated
shot in the dark to attempt to gain information.
The court noted that the question of «fishing» for data had
already been decided by Switzerland's supreme court. In 2019, it had ruled that
French officials were not fishing baselessly for information from as recently
as 2015, by basing their case on data from 2006 until 2008.
The Swiss administrative ruling is subject to appeal. The
legal tussle figures prominently in a precedent-setting criminal appeal by UBS,
which recently had its appeal to a 2019 guilty verdict heard in Paris.
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