PARIS (Reuters) – The Court of Cassation referred the UBS case to the Paris Court of Appeal on Wednesday after canceling the amount of 1.8 billion euros imposed on the Swiss bank, without calling into question its conviction for canvassing illicit banking and aggravated tax fraud laundering.
The highest French court overturns and annuls the conviction of UBS “only in its provisions relating to penalties and civil interests”, it is specified in its judgment.
The Court of Cassation refers the parties to the Court of Appeal, it is added, in order to set a new amount.
This appeal represented the Swiss bank’s last chance to overturn all or part of the judgment rendered in 2021 by the Paris Court of Appeal, which confirmed the conviction handed down at first instance against UBS in February 2019 while reducing to 1.8 billion euros the total amount of sums claimed from UBS.
The Swiss establishment was initially sentenced to a record and unprecedented fine of 3.7 billion euros and to pay 800 million in damages to the State, civil party, for having encouraged wealthy French clients to open accounts in Switzerland without the knowledge of the Public Treasury between 2004 and 2012.
If UBS “is delighted that the highest French court agrees with its position on (some) important aspects of the case”, the bank says in a press release that it regrets that the Court of Cassation has confirmed the decision concerning the illicit bank canvassing and laundering of aggravated tax fraud. This, says UBS, “despite the convention between Europe and Switzerland on the taxation of savings income and the absence of specific evidence for the alleged facts”.
The bank reaffirms having “acted at all times in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations” and promises to defend itself before the court of appeal.
(Mathieu Rosemain, Tassilo Hummel, Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the French service, editing by Kate Entringer)
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