UBS will no longer be informed or be able to contest customer data the Swiss tax authorities hand over to counterparties in France investigating alleged tax avoidance, a Swiss court said on Wednesday.
Switzerland's Federal Administrative Court upheld a decision to revoke UBS's position as a party to the arrangements over what information to send to France.Under a previous arrangement, the Swiss Federal Tax Administration had allowed UBS to inspect the files and inform the bank of all final decisions related to 40,000 UBS bank accounts requested by France. UBS could also challenge the respective final decisions on what details to send.
The bank appealed against the decision, which was rejected by the Federal Administrative Court earlier this month. In Wednesday's judgment, the court said UBS feared the data could be used in the ongoing criminal cases against the bank in France, a concern the court said was unfounded.