Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has announced that she will travel to the United States to meet with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on July 31 to smooth out international relations, strained by the ongoing UBS cross-border case, where both countries’ interests are at cross-purposes.
On July 13, a US judge granted a stay on proceedings in the case between US authorities and the Swiss bank in order to give the two countries’ governments and UBS time to negotiate an out-of-court settlement.
In an interview with the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper, Calmy-Rey expressed hope that the strong relations that the two countries share would help the two parties come to an agreement on the matter.
"Our relations are very good. UBS employs more people in the United States than in Switzerland. Given these interests of the United States, I hope that a solution will be possible soon."
An agreement that will suit both parties is to be some feat. The US authorities have underscored that they will not accept a settlement that does not involve the passing of information on US clients’ bank accounts, while the Swiss government has threatened to intervene in order to protect the country’s sovereignty, stating that they would seize the concerned data if necessary.
"For us this is not primarily about UBS,” she added. “It is about Switzerland's sovereignty. We want our laws to be respected. It is also about our financial centre and about jobs, a solution in the UBS case must fall within Swiss law."
UBS has already disclosed 250 clients’ details and agreed to pay USD870m in a separate, but related case. Many believe that the US government would accept a deal with UBS wherein only the details of UBS’s most affluent clients were disclosed. The IRS has reportedly stated that it would consider the case a failure if it were to receive less than 10,000 clients’ details. That figure, experts believe, is overly optimistic.
The UBS case has been postponed until August 3, by which time the two parties must have agreed, or made significant progress towards, a settlement, or the case will resume.
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