The squabble between Credit Suisse, Italian customers and the Swiss judiciary is far from over: the bank faces being fined for its handling of protected information.
A court in Switzerland's southernmost canton of Ticino has thrown out an objection by the country's second-biggest bank against the lawsuit filed by Italian customers on grounds of a violation of the country's banking secrecy laws as well as breaking a business secret, «AWP» newswire said yesterday.
Customers of Credit Suisse (CS) brought an action against their bank claiming it has passed on their personal data to the Italian authorities without their knowledge and in spite of the banking secrecy laws.
Properly Declared Assets
The Italian fiscal authorities have information compiled about some 14,000 CS clients, earlier media reports suggested, with some $14 billion in assets hidden away from the Italian taxman.
The Swiss bank says that its private banking is systematically based entirely on properly declared assets.
According to Emanuele Verda, the lawyer acting for some of the clients, said that CS now had time until September 23 to respond to the decision by the court and lodge an appeal if it so wishes. CS didn't respond to the report, according to «AWP».
Lack of Information
The customers who lodged the suit against the bank claim that the bank offered insurance policies via it Credit Suisse Life unit based on the Bermudas to Italian and hadn't informed them properly about the risks involved.
They are now demanding a refund from the bank covering the difference between what the Italian authorities are asking them to pay now and what they would have had to pay if they had made a voluntary declaration, the offer of which expired in November 2015.
The difference varies from 100,000 to several million euros each, according to Verda. Paolo Bernasconi, a Swiss lawyer, has mentioned claims of everything from 50,000 to more than 1 million Swiss francs.
