After German verdict, tax spy fined in Switzerland

Prosecutors in Switzerland have handed down fines for attempted economic espionage to a man already hit with penalties in Germany for spying on German tax officials, media reported Thursday.

Following a years-long investigation, the Swiss Office of the Attorney General (OAG) found a 58-year-old Swiss national guilty of trying to obtain and sell the banking data of a high-ranking German official, the RTS broadcaster reported.

The ruling, handed down on November 1, came after the man, Daniel Moser, was convicted in a separate spying case in Germany four years ago that sparked outrage there and tested ties between Berlin and Bern.

RTS said last month’s ruling showed that Moser between 2014 and 2015 had, at the request of a German journalist, dug up data he believed to pertain to Swiss bank accounts held by the former head of Germany’s secret service August Hanning.

He had hired a security specialist to help obtain Hanning’s banking information.

Not knowing that the three documents provided by the specialist were fake, he handed them over to the journalist and was compensated to the tune of 150,000 euros ($170,000).

That money came from a fourth person — a German private detective — who ended up alerting the Swiss authorities to the case, RTS said.

In its ruling, the OAG reportedly found that he was guilty of attempted espionage, regardless of whether the documents he passed on were fake.

It was, however, unable to determine whether he had intended for the information to go beyond the journalist to reach a foreign intelligence service or a private company.

In total, he was slapped with 63,000 Swiss francs ($68,000, 60,000 euros) in penalties, RTS said.

The case comes after Moser was found guilty in Germany in 2017 of spying after he compiled information on officials tasked by Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state with uncovering wealth hidden at Swiss banks.

In that case, he was handed a suspended prison sentence and fined following a plea bargain in which he admitted to the espionage operation and named his Swiss spy handlers.

During his trial, the former policeman who also once worked as a security officer at Swiss banking giant UBS, told the German court he was paid 28,000 euros between 2011 and 2013 for the spying job.

Switzerland had been seeking the identities of three German tax officers, hoping to build a case against them for illegally obtaining banking data which were protected under the country’s longtime strict secrecy laws.

Swiss banks had come under intense pressure at the time as several German states sought to buy data on German taxpayers who had parked their fortunes across the border.

Fearing prosecution, many of Germany’s rich and famous subsequently came forward to declare their hidden wealth, boosting the tax coffers of Europe’s biggest economy by billions of euros.