BERLIN: Authorities in Germany have arrested a man accused of spying on German tax agencies concerning their efforts to acquire and use stolen Swiss bank data.
It is alleged that the Swiss national, who was arrested in Frankfurt on April 28, had worked for the Swiss intelligence agency and was using his position in the German tax authorities to gather information on the investigators working on cases using data illegally obtained from Swiss banks.
The trade in confidential financial data between anonymous whistleblowers in Switzerland and the German tax authorities is a source of tension between the two countries.
In June 2016, the Swiss Federal Council adopted a dispatch said that Switzerland will continue to reject administrative assistance requests based on stolen data actively acquired by the requesting state outside of the normal administrative assistance channels.
Nevertheless, for the German states involved, the prices paid for purchasing stolen information can be repaid many times over. For example, in 2013, Lower Saxony’s Socialist Finance Minister Peter-Jurgen Schneider revealed that five data discs purchased for a sum of EUR600,000 (USD654,000) had yielded approximately EUR148m in unpaid taxes, interest, and fines.
According to Deutsche Welle, the state of Nord-Rhine Westphalia has paid EUR17.9m to acquire information on potential tax evaders since 2010, collecting in excess of EUR7bn in unpaid taxes and penalties as a result.
