Court upholds 100 appeals from UBS clients

The Swiss administrative court has concluded its considerations of appeals by UBS clients angry at the transfer of their banking data to United States tax authorities.

In a statement on Monday, the Federal Administrative Court in Bern said that it had dealt with 379 of the 380 appeals. It upheld or partially upheld 100 of them. Of the others, 94 had been rejected, and the rest were either withdrawn by the appellant or rejected by the court for procedural reasons.

Apart from the one outstanding case, the court has now dealt with the entire legal dispute surrounding the release of information to US tax authorities.

In August 2009, Switzerland agreed to transfer banking details of US citizens suspected of tax fraud between 2001 and 2008 to US tax authorities.

That agreement was later ruled invalid by the Federal Administrative Court. A revised agreement was renegotiated and approved by the Swiss parliament in June last year.

The agreement sets out the conditions for the handover of banking data of 4,450 UBS clients, of which so far more than half have had their details released to US authorities.