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Switzerland has strongly requested that a US court reject demands by the US Internal Revenue Service for information about US clients of UBS AG, saying disclosure would violate its sovereignty and international law. The Swiss government’s petition came in a federal court filing in Miami, where the. Internal Revenue Service is seeking to force UBS to reveal the identities of 52,000 Americans suspected of using accounts at the bank to hide about US$14.8B of assets and evade US taxes. “Switzerland’s laws prohibit the release of confidential information to foreign governments when the request has not been made through authorized intergovernmental channels,” the government said in its filing. “If the court were to order UBS to produce evidence from Switzerland, and backed that order with coercive powers, the court would be substituting its own authority for that of the competent Swiss authorities, and therefore would violate Swiss sovereignty and international law,” it said. Echoing a similar filing earlier in the day from UBS, it said Swiss government law also specifically prohibits release of the information demanded by the IRS.

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The right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) called on Saturday for retaliation against the United States over a U.S. tax probe into the country’s biggest bank UBS that threatens prized banking secrecy. The populist SVP, the country’s biggest party, said Switzerland should not take in any detainees from the US prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which the Swiss government said last month it could consider helping shut the camp down.

Switzerland should also reconsider its policy of representing the United States in countries where it has no diplomatic presence, the parliamentary SVP said in a statement. The SVP said Gold stored by the Swiss National Bank in the United States should be repatriated and Switzerland should ban the sale of US funds in the country to protect Swiss investors after the failure of U.S. regulators. The SVP has one minister in the seven-member Swiss government which is made up of the biggest four parties, but its populist policies have shaken up usually consensual Swiss politics.

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