February, 16, 2010

Historically, speaking; under the Swiss principle of bank secrecy, privacy is statutorily enforced, with Swiss law strictly limiting any information shared with third parties, including tax authorities, foreign governments or even Swiss authorities, except when requested by a Swiss judge's subpoena However banking is not strictly anonymous since under its banking law all Swiss bank accounts..

This law only permits a bank to share information with others in cases of severe criminal acts, such as identifying a terrorist's bank account or tax fraud, but not simple non-reporting of taxable income (called tax evasion in Switzerland).Any bank employee violating a client's privacy could be punished quite severely by law. Bilateral treaties negotiated in 2009 between Switzerland and a number of countries may weaken secrecy related to tax evasion; as did a special agreement negotiated in 2009 between the USA and Switzerland concerning clients of the bank UBS SA.

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