Finma appeals to Supreme Court
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s financial market supervisory authority, Finma, has decided to appeal to the country’s supreme court in the UBS client data case. A lower court had found it acted wrongly in ordering UBS to turn over the names of 300 of the bank’s US clients to the US tax authorities in February 2009.
Finma’s board voted 21 January to take its case to the Federal Supreme Court, saying it (Finma) “is using the opportunity to have Switzerland’s supreme court pass judgment on the extent of the Financial Market Supervisory Authority’s legal latitude in crisis situations.”
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Federal Tax Administration (FTA) has finished reviewing the first 500 files of UBS clients suspected of tax fraud by the IRS, the US tax authority. The FTA announced 25 November that it has not communicated names to the IRS and will not, as stipulated in the Swiss-US agreement, until clients have exhausted the appeals process.
Go shopping in Zug at night
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s highest appeals court, the Swiss Federal Administrative Court (FAC) has decided that gas station shops may not stay open all night long in Zurich and surroundings. They must close between 01:00 and 05:00, or violate the law against working at night. The shops’ owners argued that since the petrol station itself and the attendant restaurants are not affected by the night work law, they should be allowed to keep the stores open.
