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Doris Leuthard, Swiss president, meets Nicolas Sarkozy, French president at the World Economic Forum (photo ©2010 WEF and swissimage.ch)

Davos, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz told reporters in Davos late Wednesday 27 January that a French-Swiss crisis over stolen bank data is now over, and the bilateral double taxation agreement that was put on hold by Switzerland in December is nearly back on track.

Rumours have been swirling in the past few days, suggesting that France and Switzerland had found a way out of a diplomatic struggle over stolen bank data, which French officials appeared to confirm.

Merz’s comments came at the end of a meeting with his French counterpart, Eric Worth, on the fringes of the World Economic Forum. The two met alone after a brief meeting with the presidents of their countries, Doris Leuthard and Nicolas Sarkozy.

The agreement covers three issues:

• France provided Switzerland with complete copies of the data
• It has promised not to ask Switzerland for judicial assistance in cases where this data is used and
• It has promised to inform Switzerland if it is obliged to deliver to other countries information gathered from the stolen data and, in addition, to ask them not to use the data to request judicial assistance from Switzerland.

The data was stolen by Frenchman Hervé Falciani, who worked at the Geneva branch of British bank HSBC. The Swiss government opened a criminal investigation into Falciani’s theft in May 2008, and tensions increased when France’s Budget Minister Worth said France would use the data. The two countries drew up a bilateral double taxation agreement in late 2009 but Switzerland withdrew its support in December saying it wanted assurances from France that stolen data would not be used in requests for judicial assistance.

France has 180,000 citizens resident in Switzerland and another 100,000 French citizens work across the border in Switzerland.

Links to other sites: TSR (Fre), World Economic Forum