The Zurich public Prosecutor's office charges against three German accusations of economic espionage and violation of banking secrecy. A Stuttgart lawyer and two former employees of a Swiss bank are to have illegally passed internal bank documents to German courts and authorities. This has resulted in research of time, research center Correctiv, ZDF magazine frontal 21 and Swiss digital magazine Republic.
The accused are now threatened with prison sentences of more than three years. However, y deny accusations and point out that documents have contributed substantially to clarification of one of biggest tax scandals in Germany, so-called ' jizz-Ex ' scandal. For decades, bankers, consultants and lawyers had cheated state for tax money. The whole dimension of fraud had become known last year.
The background of current indictment is a dispute between bank J. Safra Sarasin and one of its richest customers, German billionaire and drugstore entrepreneur Erwin Müller. He had invested over bank in jizz-ex-business and was wrongly advised according to his own data. His lawyer Eckart Seith took from two former employees of bank incriminating documents and used m for lawsuit. In May 2017, Landgericht Ulm J. Safra Sarasin sentenced payment of 45 million euro to Müller. On or hand, bank has appealed.
Attorney Seith also passed on documents to German authorities. Thus y became central building blocks in German process around jizz-ex-shops, through which state has lost many billions.
The focus of Swiss judiciary is on three Germans. The Swiss Ministry of Justice had authorized Public Prosecutor's office in Zurich 2015 to investigate three ways of economic espionage. This could also have political consequences. Lothar binding, financial spokesman of SPD Bundestag group, said: "I believe that we should also take up this case diplomatically and simply ask what legal understanding Switzerland is following. Maybe it's because you want to make an example, you want to give a sample of how hard you're going to possibly deter ors. "
The whole story you read in coming issue of time.
Date Of Update: 21 March 2018, 12:02
