The French energy company - now part of TotalFinaElf - has been under investigation by the Swiss, German, and French authorities for some time as a result of allegations that laundered bribes were paid to French and German politicians throughout the 1990s in order to ease the passage of acquisitions and contracts.

However, the SFBC is particularly interested in payments made to a Taiwanese businessman which are believed to have been instrumental in landing a French company a $2.5 billion contract to deliver warships to Taiwan. The Swiss watchdog believes that although UBS terminated relations with the organisation, there may have been reporting duties which went unfulfilled under the cover of the country's strict banking secrecy laws.

Sources close to UBS at the time said that the bank felt that it had acted properly by terminating the client relationship, but that it had not notified other banks of concerns regarding Elf Aquitaine.

'We looked at how UBS came to this relationship and why they closed it down, and whether the reporting duty would have been violated,' said Daniel Zuberbuehler from the SFBC. However, this issue raises very clearly the ambiguity over how and when suspicious financial transactions should be reported. 'From the explanations that the bank has given us, it is not at all obvious that there would have been a reporting duty,' he explained.