60
preparations for the transfer of information in only 26 cases (Schaub 201 1). This
was too slow for the USA and on February 17, the Department of Justice public ly
threatened to indic t UBS if the bank would not enter into a deferred prosecution
agreement (DPA), pay a fine of USD 780 m illion and disc lose the names of ap-
proximately 250 US clients to the IRS wit hin the next 24 hours (Bondi 2010; GPK
2010). In response, Switzerland complied and authorised the transfer of 255 client
files.
US pressure, however, did not relent. The day after UBS had entered into the DPA,
US authorities requested further clien t files. Worried that UBS might buckle under
the pressure, the Swiss government threatened to seize all US client files. In Au-
gust 2009 Switzerland and the USA finally reached an agreement: in return for an
additional 4,450 client files and an u ndert aking to expedite information requests,
the USA promised to let UBS off the hook (Emmenegger 2017). These conce s-
sions were nonetheless strongl y contested w ithin Switzerland, in particular by the
political right and large parts of the financial servic es industry. After the Swiss
Feder al Administrative Court had come to the conc lusion (in January 2010) that
some of these data tra nsfers had violated banking secrecy regulat ions , the bilateral
agreement could only be saved by tu rning it into a state treaty (in June 2010). As
stated by Urs Zulauf, then chief legal advise r to the Swiss Financial Marke t Super -
visory Authority, the government was s trongly concerned about its ability to get
the state treaty throu gh parliament. As a consequence, the government interpreted
the agreem ent in a very restrictive manner and excluded the expedited re view of
US information requests for banks other than
UBS.14
Clearly, Switzerland was not
willing to go any fu rther than ultimately needed.
14
Personal interview, April 7, 2014. A few days before the Swiss Parliament accepted the state
treaty, the Swiss P eople’s Party laun ched a parliamentar y init iative to give b anking secrecy con-
stituti on al status, which the Par l iament, however, ul timately rejected. rejected.
