The US Department of Justice has indicted Switzerland’s oldest private bank, Wegelin founded in 1741, with fraud and conspiracy for enabling US customers to hide at least $1.2 billion in deposits from US taxation. This is the first such prosecution in US history.
Wegelin, which operates only in Switzerland, used UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) as its correspondent bank. The US DoJ seized $16 million from UBS in a separate civil forfeiture case according to a report from Reuters.
There are 10 other banks being investigated by the DoJ on similar charges that threaten to strike down the long-held tradition of secrecy accorded to Swiss banks.