President of the Swiss Confederation for 2009 Hans-Rudolf Merz (one-year term) on Thursday apologised in Tripoli for the arrest in 2008 of one of the sons of the Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. Two Swiss businessmen currently detained in Libya would be released "soon," according to a finance ministry statement. Relations between the countries have been strained since July 2008 when Hannibal Gaddafi and his wife were arrested in Geneva and charged with assaulting two domestic employees. Following a private settlement, the former employees withdrew their claims.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday indicted a Swiss private banking executive and a Swiss lawyer, accusing them of selling tax evasion services to wealthy clients. The move signals US plans to take the fight against tax evasion to Swiss banks, beyond UBS.

The indictment, filed in United States District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida., charged Hansruedi Schumacher, a director at NZB Neue Zürcher (Bank of Zurich), and Matthias W. Rickenbach, a Swiss lawyer, with one count each of conspiring to defraud the United States. It was filed a day after the giant Swiss bank UBS said that it had agreed to disclose 4,450 American client names and account details.

Following the UBS deal that was agreed between the US and Swiss governments, the Swiss government on Thursday made a SFr1.2bn (€790m; $1.1bn) profit on its 10-month investment in UBS.

The Swiss government provided a bailout to Switzerland’s biggest bank last October and convertible notes it held were equivalent to a 9 per cent stake in the bank.

The return on the public investment was about 26 per cent.

According to the DOJ indictment, Schumacher and Rickenbach helped wealthy American clients conceal their assets by establishing sham and nominee offshore entities to hide their US clients' assets and income while allowing these clients to still control the assets and make investment decisions.

The indictment further alleges that Schumacher and Rickenbach regularly traveled to the United States to conduct banking and investment activities with their US clients and that when they traveled they concealed their business activities in the United States by falsely representing to American authorities that they were traveling to the U.S. for personal reasons. While in the United States, the defendants would sometimes bring cash for their clients..

According to court documents, Schumacher and Rickenbach aided their wealthy American clients repatriate money back to the United States using several deceptive means. Schumacher and Rickenbach helped their clients obtain offshore credit cards and created sham loan documents. Additionally, Schumacher and Rickenbach falsified bank documents to generate the appearance that assets of their US clients belonged to Swiss citizens, and they falsified documents to disguise their United States clients’ repatriation of offshore funds as inheritances from foreign citizens.

According to court documents, Schumacher and Rickenbach discouraged their US clients from voluntarily coming into compliance in the United States. Instead, the defendants encouraged their clients to transfer their assets from UBS to NZB, a smaller bank in Switzerland. The defendants told their clients that their assets and identification would be safer at NZB because they had no presence in the United States and was therefore less likely to be pressured by the American authorities to disclose the identities of their United States clients.

"The Justice Department will continue to investigate leads provided by U.S. taxpayers who have come forward to disclose foreign bank accounts and will prosecute those foreign bankers and banks who illegally helped U.S. clients evade taxes," said John A. DiCicco, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Tax Division. "We encourage foreign banks to come forward and disclose their conduct immediately, before we learn about their criminal conduct from US taxpayers."

"This is another step in our ongoing effort to pursue hidden offshore assets -- no matter where they are located," said IRS (Internal Revenue Service) Commissioner Doug Shulman. "We're in the early stages of our work to crack down on offshore tax evasion. Through our efforts, we are gaining access to more and more information on institutions and individuals involved in offshore tax evasion, and you can expect us to use all of our enforcement tools to stop this abuse. For people with hidden offshore assets, they have an opportunity to get right with the government. Time is quickly running out, and people should take advantage of our voluntary disclosure process before special provisions expire September 2."

Tax evasion is not a crime in Switzerland.