Judge Jed Rakoff ordered Wegelin in March this year to pay a fine of $74 million for helping US citizens to dodge taxes. Wegelin has ceased to operate in the US and its non-US operations have been sold to the Raiffeisen Group. To all intents and purposes, the Wegelin name – dating back to the early 1740s – no longer exists.

The comments by Rakoff to the Swissinfo publication come as Swiss banks, such as Vontobel, last week began to state how they are going to sign up to the recent Swiss-US tax pact, agreed in August, that is designed to draw a line under years of wrangling between the two countries over the conduct of Swiss banks. The pact has been seen in some quarters as a nail in the coffin of Swiss bank secrecy law, which in its current form dates back to 1934.

A number of large Swiss banks, such as UBS – which settled criminal and civil cases with US authorities in 2009 – no longer provide offshore banking services to US clients.

“What led to recent US activities was the feeling that the Swiss banks had become more aggressive in promoting their ability to help clients evade taxes. They were in effect advertising this to US citizens as an advantage of holding Swiss bank accounts,” Rakoff told the publication. “The Department of Justice felt this went too far. It’s bad enough that Switzerland made itself available to help people evade their taxes, but even worse that they were actively promoting it,” he was quoted as saying.

“It is a sad but true fact in the history of the world that powerful nations have acted as bullies towards less powerful nations. That remains a very real danger, but I don’t think it fits this situation. What right does one state have to impose its laws and values on another? That’s an age-old debate. The US does not have the right to impose its values on another country unless that country is directly harming us,” he continued.

“The US perception is that Swiss banking secrecy is an economic decision taken by Switzerland to foster its strong banking activity. That’s not sufficient justification for the harm done to us through massive tax evasion,” he said.

The degree of co-operation that Switzerland is willing to give towards other countries over tax matters remains controversial in the state; last week, Swiss lawmakers voted against ratifying an agreement with France over inheritance taxes, for example, claiming the deal would hit Swiss sovereignty.