Eckart Seith, a lawyer from Stuttgart celebrated in Germany as a whistleblower in the Cum-Ex tax fraud scandal, is to face trial again in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
The Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne upheld an appeal lodged by prosecutors in Zurich against an earlier judgement and referred the case back to the Zurich High Court.<\/p>\n
Seith told dpa he was not surprised by the decision.<\/p>\n
The Swiss authorities had accused Seith of economic espionage because he presented German authorities with internal documents from a Swiss bank that helped trigger investigations into illegal Cum-Ex transactions.<\/p>\n
Two former German employees of the J. Safra Sarasin bank were also charged alongside him.<\/p>\n
The trial began in Zurich in 2019 and proceeded through several courts. It was discontinued in 2024 on the grounds that the public prosecutor who initially led the investigation had not been impartial.<\/p>\n
Zurich’s public prosecutor’s office challenged that decision, and the Federal Supreme Court has now ruled in its favour.<\/p>\n
Fraud worth billions<\/p>\n
The public prosecutor’s office argues that the disclosure of internal Swiss bank documents to German authorities constitutes economic espionage, regardless of the fact that it led to the uncovering of serious criminal offences.<\/p>\n
Under Swiss law, banks are regarded as custodians of confidential information and are not permitted to disclose confidential documents.<\/p>\n
Seith obtained the documents while representing German drugstore entrepreneur Erwin M\u00fcller, who lost millions through illegal Cum-Ex deals carried out by his Swiss bank.<\/p>\n
The material contributed to investigations into massive tax fraud affecting Germany and other countries.<\/p>\n
“The investigation of serious criminal offences, including by holders of confidential information, is both desired and permitted under the European legal system,” Seith told the dpa. “I do not expect Switzerland to place itself outside the European legal system.”<\/p>\n
The Cum-Ex schemes<\/p>\n
Cum-Ex transactions involved shares being traded rapidly around dividend payment dates, allowing several participants to claim refunds for capital gains tax that had only been paid once, or in some cases not at all.<\/p>\n
Several people involved in the scheme have been sentenced to prison by German courts in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eckart Seith, a lawyer from Stuttgart celebrated in Germany as a whistleblower in the Cum-Ex tax fraud scandal,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[52191,52192,42362,52193,41,1085,17,12559],"class_list":["post-106742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-eckart-seith","tag-economic-espionage","tag-federal-supreme-court","tag-german-authorities","tag-swiss","tag-swiss-bank","tag-switzerland","tag-tax-fraud"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116964879598854575","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}