What Is In The Data Leak From Credit Suisse, And Why Are We Publishing It?

In popular culture, there is nowhere safer to stash your cash than the vault of a Swiss bank. From thrillers to spy novels, Swiss bankers are depicted as discreet men in suits who know which questions not to ask. As James Bond quipped in The World Is Not Enough: “If you can’t trust a Swiss banker, what’s the world come to?”

- Paul Lewis

Switzerland dismisses such stereotypes as lazy and outdated. But its reputation as one of the premier tax havens has not come out of nowhere. The country has nurtured, codified and even advertised the discretion of its bankers for centuries, enjoying lucrative returns as elites flocked to the Alps to stockpile their riches.

Over the past decade, however, things have started to change. When Switzerland began requiring its banks to share client data with some foreign authorities under a global exchange system to combat tax evasion in 2018, it was heralded as a watershed moment. Some even called it the end of Swiss banking secrecy.

Our reporting suggests that conclusion was overblown. Swiss banks do share client data with many countries, but many developing nations are excluded from the exchange system. Meanwhile Switzerland’s famed banking secrecy law – article 47 of the 1934 Federal Law on Banks – remains in force. Those who fall foul of it risk five years in jail.

Not that long ago Switzerland strengthened its banking secrecy law, which had originally applied only to bankers and other insiders. As of 2015, the law can theoretically be applied to any third party who “reveals” or “exploits” a secret that has come from within a Swiss bank.

The wording is sufficiently vague that an overzealous prosecutor could think about using it against a journalist exposing wrongdoing by a Swiss bank or its clients. Any such move would be considered a brazen attack on free expression, not least in a country such as Switzerland, which is among the top 10 countries in the World Press Freedom Index.