GENEVA,Febrauary1,2012(AFP): Switzerland is ready to hand over thousands of encoded bank documents to US officials investigating tax evasion by US citizens, the Swiss finance department said on Tuesday.Full access to the data, however, will only be provided when an agreement is reached between Bern and Washington on controlling tax evasion, it said. “It is not data about clients but about (Swiss) bank activity in the US,” said a finance spokesman in an email to AFP. The department did not reveal how many documents were involved but in the case of one unnamed bank, the figure was about 20,000 pages of coded information. The finance spokesman said the documents were “coded employee data,” not details of bank clients. The daily Blick newspaper reported that Credit Suisse was among the banks involved and that the data included emails, internal mail and information on staff and clients. The bank, Switzerland’s second largest after UBS, declined to comment when contacted by AFP. Bern is in the process of negotiating a tax agreement with Washington to address the issue of US nationals hiding money in Swiss accounts. The US has been putting pressure on Swiss banks to release information to aid a crackdown on tax evaders. Swiss media said the gesture of handing over data would help pave the way for an agreement similar to those already signed with Britain and Germany, which would regularise assets held by American clients in Swiss banks. The US probe reportedly focuses on 11 Swiss banks, among them Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and Wegelin. Wegelin announced on Friday the sale of all its non-US activities to fellow Swiss bank Raiffeisen bank as it battles the dispute. Three Wegelin bankers were charged in New York earlier this month suspected of helping US customers evade taxes.
