SHKB, which offers private banking among its services, joins the dozens of Swiss institutions that have already signed NPAs with the DoJ under its Swiss Bank Program. The programme, which was introduced in 2013, gave Swiss banks the opportunity to resolve potential criminal liabilities in the US by advising the department by the end of 2013 that they had reason to believe that they had committed tax-related criminal offences in connection with undeclared US-related accounts. 

Since August 2008, SHKB, which was founded in 1883, held a total of 182 US-related accounts with around $84.5 million in assets under management. In this period, SHKB held a US-related account with maximum assets under management of around $11.5 million. The nominal accountholder was a foundation in Liechtenstein, but the true owner was a US person, which aided the client’s ability to conceal an undeclared account from the Internal Revenue Service.

SHKB knew or had reason to know that some US taxpayers who had accounts at the bank were not complying with their US income tax and reporting obligations. It offered a variety of traditional Swiss banking services that it knew could assist, and that did in fact assist, US clients to conceal assets and income from the IRS.

The bank issued cheques in amounts of less than $10,000 that were drawn on accounts of US taxpayers, even though it knew, or had reason to know, that the withdrawals were made to avoid triggering scrutiny under the US currency transaction reporting requirements. Since August 2008, SHKB processed significant cash withdrawals for at least 15 US taxpayers at or around the time the clients’ accounts, which had undeclared assets, were closed.

Through the Swiss Bank Program, SHKB has co-operated with the DoJ and provided information about its cross-border business with US-related accounts. Following the bank's efforts, approximately 24 of its US-related accounts have entered into an IRS voluntary disclosure programme or initiative. SHKB has also obtained waivers of Swiss bank secrecy for 87 per cent of its US-related accounts and has provided customer names for those accounts.