The US Department of Justice has reached its final non-prosecution agreement under its 'Swiss Bank Programme,' through which it has imposed $1.36 billion in penalties on 80 Banks since its first agreement with BSI in March last year.

The final deal under the programme, which enables Swiss banks to avoid prosecution over undeclared US-related accounts, was made with HSZH Verwaltungs. In 2002, the bank was acquired from UBS by SGKB, the state-owned cantonal bank of St Gallen. Between 19th September 2008 and 26th January 2009, HSZH knowingly opened six undeclared accounts for US clients with a total value of $9.2 million in assets under management; all six clients had previously been with UBS.

The DoJ said that HSZH conducted a US cross-border banking business that helped some US clients to open and maintain undeclared accounts in Switzerland and hide their assets and income from the US government. The bank will pay a $49.76 million penalty.

Acting associate attorney general Stuart Delery told reporters: “The department’s Swiss Bank Programme has been a successful, innovative effort to get the financial institutions that facilitated fraud on the American tax system to come forward with information about their wrongdoing – and to ensure that they are held responsible for it. As we have seen over the last year, Swiss banks are paying an appropriate penalty for their misconduct, and the information and continuing co-operation we have required the banks to provide in order to participate in the programme is allowing us to systematically attack offshore tax avoidance schemes.”

Big Swiss names that have dodged criminal charges through the programme include Union Bancaire Privée, which earlier this month agreed to a penalty of $187.767 million, Lombard Odier, which will pay $99.809 million; and Deutsche Bank's Swiss division which was docked $31.026 million. The information they and the other signatories to the programme have disgorged is allowing the US Internal Revenue Service to pursue leads in jurisdictions well beyond Switzerland.