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Fittingly for a business that has peddled discretion for 271 years, the Zurich office of Wegelin is easy to miss. But according to an indictment unsealed in New York on February 2nd, Switzerland’s oldest bank brazenly helped its clients dodge American taxes on $1.2 billion in offshore accounts and poached American clients from UBS, a giant Swiss bank that prosecutors ensnared earlier. This first indictment of a Swiss bank has rocked the country’s financial industry. Konrad Hummler, Wegelin’s boss, had bluntly defended the right of banks to shield clients from their governments’ tax regimes; he once dismissed critics as “tax cartels” and “illegitimate states”. Now even humble pie may not save his bank from a criminal conviction in America...
