Tim writes:

My reading of the situation (Mooney's "Capital Protection" or somesuch--book not handy to me as I write) is that the Swiss-based banks will disclose records under several circumstances, and may be required to under Swiss law. These circumstances included evidence the account involves fraud, embezzlement, theft, etc.

In particular, they take bank robbery real seriously. The original Swiss bank privacy laws made it illegal for banks to disclose information about their customers except for investigation of things that were crimes in Switzerland; the Swiss view tax evasion not as a crime, but as a civil issue between a citizen and a government, and view things like currency export and gold possession as no problem at all. The original foreign-government-defined "crime" that prompted this was "being Jewish" - the Nazi government pressured Swiss banks to turn over information about German accountholders with Jewish-sounding names (who might be trying to escape), and had the threat that they could require all German accountholders to withdraw their money from banks that didn't collaborate. I'm not sure if the laws were enacted during this period or after the war.

As I understand things at this instant, the Swiss don't recognize "tax evasion" in another country as an adequate reason to break bank-customer secrecy, but discussions are underway with the "enforcers" from the U.S., and many analysts predict that Switzerland will capitulate on this point as well.

They've apparently been pressured to collaborate with Yankee investigations into politically-incorrect substance trafficking. Bill