Credit Suisse agrees to pay €150 mn to settle German tax evasion probe
19 Sep 2011
Credit Suisse, the second largest bank in Switzerland, has agreed to pay €150 million ($206.4 million) in an out-of-court settlement to end a German tax evasion probe.
Zurich-based Credit Suisse said that the one-off payment ends a complex and prolonged legal dispute and said in a statement, ''Credit Suisse welcomes this outcome. A complex and prolonged legal dispute has been avoided, with an agreed solution that provides legal clarity.''
The settlement revealed yesterday with German prosecutors comes after Swiss private bank Julius Baer earlier this year reached a €150-million deal to avoid a similar German probe.
In July 2010, 13 offices of Credit Suisse in Germany were searched by the Düsseldorf prosecutor's office as part of a probe into whether the bank's employees helped clients evade taxes.
About 150 investigators from the Düsseldorf prosecutor's office took part in searches as part of an ongoing probe, where Credit Suisse helped German citizens evade taxes in their home country and park their money in Swiss bank accounts.
The searches and the investigations came after German state of North Rhine-Westphalia paid about €2.5 million to an unnamed person in exchange for a disc containing names of 1,100 wealthy Germans, who had kept unaccounted money in Credit Suisse, Switzerland's second-biggest bank after UBS.
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