Safra Sarasin has paid millions in fines to Germany to amend for deals aimed at the optimization of taxes. But the case is not closed and the political dimension will be tested in a trial in Zurich next month.
A German lawyer will have to appear at a district court in Zurich on March 26, «Handelsblatt» (behind paywall) reported. The prosecution wants him convicted for the betrayal of secrets and economic espionage. The maximum prison term he faces is three-and-a-half years.
The lawyer last autumn won a compensation package worth 45 million euros ($51 million) for his client, Erwin Mueller, from Swiss private bank J. Safra Sarasin. The German court awarded the money to make up for losses that the drugstore magnate incurred through investments in so-called cum-ex funds, a financial product set up to exploit a tax loophole in Germany.
Restaurant Dealings
Soon after the famous victory for Mueller, the counsel became the target of an investigation by the Zurich prosecutor’s office. The charge was that he had promised part of the compensation to the former legal counsel of Bank Sarasin in exchange for incriminating evidence.
The arrangement is said to have been concluded in a restaurant in Schaffhausen, a border town in the North-East of Switzerland. The documents – internal presentations, bills, lists of mandates and contracts – were passed on at a later meeting between the two. The German lawyer denies having violated Swiss law and denies having offered to pay money for documents.
The former legal counsel of Sarasin and another ex-employee of the bank will also stand trial in Zurich.
A Costly Business – for Germany
The case is politically sensitive because the German lawyer delivered important evidence to German authorities investigating cum-ex deals. Prosecutors in Cologne, Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf are looking into the dealings of numerous banks said to have been involved in similar cum-ex deals.
The German tax authorities missed out on as much as 12 billion euros because of the deals, according to estimates.
