GENE­VA-Two Swiss banks will this week out­line their re­sponse to grow­ing pres­sure from the US to give up tax-evad­ing Amer­i­can cus­tomers and the bankers who helped them. Julius Baer Group and Zuercher Kan­ton­al­bank are among at least 11 Swiss banks tar­get­ed by US au­thor­i­ties fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful case against UBS AG that forced Switzer­land's biggest bank to hand over 4,450 clients' files to Wash­ing­ton in 2010. Since then, an amnesty pro­gramme and the ar­rest of sev­er­al Swiss bankers have giv­en US au­thor­i­ties am­ple am­mu­ni­tion to pur­sue oth­er banks in the Alpine na­tion. Zurich-list­ed Julius Baer, found­ed in 1890, will de­tail its po­si­tion when the bank's full-year re­sults are re­leased to­day, spokesman Jan Von­der Muehll told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press in an email yes­ter­day. Zuercher Kan­ton­al­bank, found­ed in 1870 and owned by the can­ton (state) of Zurich where many of Switzer­land's biggest banks are based, is ex­pect­ed to fol­low suit when its an­nu­al re­sults are pre­sent­ed Fri­day.

Swiss banks have been shak­en in­to ac­tion by the un­ex­pect­ed clo­sure last month of the na­tion's old­est bank. St Gallen-based Wegelin & Co, whose his­to­ry dates back to 1741, an­nounced Jan. 27 that it was sell­ing most of its busi­ness af­ter US au­thor­i­ties in­dict­ed the bank with con­spir­ing to help Amer­i­can clients hide more than US$1.2 bil­lion from the US In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice. The move by US pros­e­cu­tors un­der­mined Swiss Pres­i­dent and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Eve­line Wid­mer-Schlumpf's as­ser­tion last month that Wash­ing­ton and Bern were mak­ing progress to­ward re­solv­ing all US tax eva­sion cas­es against Swiss banks. The Swiss gov­ern­ment said last week it had agreed to pro­vide the US with doc­u­ments out­lin­ing the US busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties of Swiss banks. The Fi­nance Min­istry said the names of in­di­vid­ual bankers in the doc­u­ments would be en­crypt­ed un­til a deal with Wash­ing­ton is struck.

AP