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Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - When the US announced Thursday 19 February that it was filing a civil suit against Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, it provoked a major debate in Switzerland, with harsh criticism of the bank, but also of the United States. Outside the country, moves against Switzerland’s banking secrecy appeared to build momentum over the weekend, starting with discussions to tighten global financial controls among the G20 (largest 19 economies plus the European Union) countries, meeting in Berlin.

Political parties at both extremes in Switzerland, the UDC right-wing party and the Greens, have called for an urgent debate in the Swiss parliament over banking secrecy. The UDC is demanding that it become part of the Swiss constitution while the Socialists are asking that the country abandon it.

Le Temps, Switzerland’s most respected French language newspaper, Sunday 22 February carried as its main story the preparations it says are underway in Berlin to fight Swiss banking secrecy, and it quotes articles to that effect in Britain’s Guardian and Observer as well as the Sunday edition of NZZ in Zurich. The debate raging over banking secrecy occupies several other articles in the Geneva newspaper.

TSR, Swiss public television, on its web site devotes leading story space to comments by numerous political and banking observers in Switzerland. Among them:

• the president of the Swiss Bankers Association, Pierre Mirabaud, who says that UBS and Credit Suisse are too large for a country the size of Switzerland
• the president of the banking surveillance body Finma, Eugen Haltiner, who defends UBS chairman Peter Kurer against calls for him and CEO Marcel Rohner to resign: Haltiner says only a small number of employees, who were not at a high level, were involved in practices that went against American regulations

TSR also notes that Switzerland has sent a letter to the US Senate saying it will not participate in a Senate hearing Tuesday (postponed until March in any event) in protest, citing finance ministry spokesperson Roland Meier, “The Swiss government regrets that the US Department of Justice has threatened UBS with unilateral measures despite the bank’s and Swiss authorities’ collaboration with American authorities.”

UBS 19 February said it intends to fight the US civil suit.

Related: “EU heads back financial clampdown,” BBC 22 February 2009