Three Swiss banks have avoided criminal liabilities in the United States by co-operating with the authorities there. Richard Weber, the chief IRS criminal investigator (pictured), is looking forward to exploiting the resulting treasure-trove of personal information that could lead to more prosecutions.

BNP Paribas (Suisse), KBL Switzerland and Bank CIC have signed non-prosescution agreements with the US Department of Justice over many secret accounts that they kept up for US taxpayers. All together, they will pay penalties of more than $81 million.

In accordance with the department's Swiss Bank Programme, the three banks will co-operate in any related criminal or civil proceedings and, in due course, show the Americans that they have put controls in place to stop future misconduct involving undeclared US accounts.

BNPP has been operating in Switzerland since 1872. The Geneva-headquartered bank offered a range of traditional Swiss banking services that it knew could help, and did in fact help, certain American clients to conceal their assets and income from the Internal Revenue Service. In one case, a wealth management relationship manager failed to mention a client’s US passport when opening a wealth management account for that client.

Since August 2008, BNPP has held and managed around 760 US-related accounts with a peak value of $1.2 billion in assets under management. The bank will pay a penalty of $59.783 million.

Geneva-based KBL Switzerland held significant numbers of US-related accounts, including some accounts for US taxpayers whom UBS, Credit Suisse and other banks had dropped. In one instance, a KBL Switzerland relationship manager assured a US taxpayer-client that, because of Swiss bank secrecy laws, Switzerland would not freely exchange account information with the US.

The bank also allowed US taxpayer-clients to use the value of assets held in undeclared accounts through loans that were secured by their undeclared assets on deposit. Since August 2008, KBL Switzerland has maintained 277 US-related accounts with a total value of $255 million. It will pay a penalty of $18.792 million.

Bank CIC, a subsidiary of the French financial group Crédit Mutuel-CIC, has nine branches in Switzerland. The bank also offered Swiss banking services that it knew or should have known helped US clients hide assets and income from the IRS.

Since August 2008, it had 261 US-related accounts, comprising $228 million in assets under management. Bank CIC will pay a penalty of $3.281 million. Richard Weber, the chief IRS criminal investigator, is looking forward to the wealth of information that the banks are going to grant him. He told reporters: “At this point, we’ve already learned so much about the formerly hidden world of offshore banking.”