A few months ago, Geneva journalist Christophe Ungar got quite a shock: without any prior notice, his local bank closed out his mutual funds account, resulting in considerable losses due to the early withdrawal. This was not an inadvertent mistake, but, rather, an intentional move to oust Ungar, a US citizen, from the financial institution where he had banked for years. “When the bank realized I was American, they started treating me like I had the plague,” he says.
This scenario is all too familiar to another American, Geneva financial adviser Anne Hornung-Soukup. Her accounts – including a pension investment fund – were suddenly closed in recent months by her two banks, each explaining in a letter that its services are no longer available to US citizens.
The backlash against US clients has been building up since 2008, with the news that Switzerland’s largest financial institution, UBS, helped wealthy Americans hide billions of dollars in undisclosed offshore accounts to evade taxes. The bank had to pay a $780 million fine and release the names of 250 suspected American tax dodgers. In recent years, however, Swiss banks have stepped up their efforts to curb the flow of undeclared money from the U.S. and elsewhere.
http://world.time.com/2013/12/20/swiss-banks-tell-american-expats-to-empty-their-accounts/
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