Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “There is no guarantee that the IRS will have 4,450 names” when Switzerland finishes reviewing the 4,450 UBS bank accounts identified according to the criteria established by the United States and Switzerland, Folco Galli of the Swiss Federal Justice Department told GenevaLunch Wednesday 18 November. There is also no reason to believe the number will be close to this – or, on the other hand, far smaller. The US ambassador to Switzerland, Donald Beyer, last week commented that he expects the number to be far smaller, while the New York Times appears to have erroneously implied 17 November that Switzerland must turn over this many names to the IRS.

”At the moment, no one knows,” Galli says, because the accounts and names are being reviewed, a process that will take a year. And no one knows how many, if any, of the 14,700 individuals who came forward to the IRS under the amnesty programme, are part of the group of 4,450 UBS accounts, since those account holders are currently all known only to the bank itself. UBS, as part of the agreement, is filtering the identified accounts based on the governments’ criteria in order to turn data over to the federal administrative review.

The complete details of the US-Swiss agreement and criteria for turning over account information are now available in English, on the Swiss government’s web site (under documentation).

Annex to Swiss-US agreement, with criteria for identifying UBS accounts to be processed under the terms of the treaty

Article 1 of the treaty says that “The Swiss Confederation shall process . . . a request by the United States for information regarding US clients of UBS AG. . .Based on the criteria set forth in the Annex, the Contracting Parties estimate and expect that the number of open or closed accounts falling under the Treaty Request is approximately 4,450.” Galli clarified that if only part of the already identified accounts meet the criteria for judicial assistance, Switzerland will not look for others to increase the number turned over to the IRS to 4,450: it will have met its treaty obligations by processing the group of UBS accounts currently under review.

Bern late Tuesday issued a table, available only in French, to clarify the criteria, after it became clear that there was some confusion in media reports.

The agreement signed by the two countries in August 2008 stipulates that Switzerland will review 4,450 cases, which have been identified, but some of these may not require Switzerland’s judicial assistance to the IRS, for example in the following cases:

• if a case does not, after review, meet the criteria
• if it turns out that the account holder has already turned himself or herself in as part of the IRS amnesty programme that ended 15 October (the 4,450 were identified before this date)
• if the account holder challenges the administrative decision in the Swiss high administrative court and wins the case
• or if the court decides to challenge any or all of the decisions because they do not conform to Swiss law.

Links to other sites: Le Temps (Fre), Financial Times

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