Parliamentary committees may access UBS files
The government has granted two key parliamentary committees access to cabinet files on the handling of UBS tax fraud affair in the United States.
Faced with the threat of a formal parliamentary investigation, the government agreed on Wednesday to provide the relevant documents concerning the handover of banking data to the US Internal Revenue Service.
Earlier this month the Federal Administrative Court ruled that the Swiss Financial and Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) had acted illegally when it transferred the details of 285 UBS wealthy US account holders last year.
The files will only be made available to the parliamentarians under “strict conditions”, according to an announcement by the Federal Chancellery.
They will be given to the committees’ working group which is examining the supervision of the financial markets and the handover of UBS client data.
The group will have to declare in writing that only its president, vice-president and the two representatives from the both the House of Representatives and the Senate will have access to the confidential material.
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