Financial Transparency Coalition

James B. Stewart: Do you know anyone with a Swiss bank account? I don’t, which is probably no surprise since the whole point is secrecy. But evidently there are plenty of Americans who do—at least 52,000 at UBS alone—whose identities the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice are trying to learn.

UBS AG (UBS) should pay U.S. taxes on 52,000 secret accounts held by American citizens in Switzerland as part of a settlement to a high-profile legal case between the bank and U.S. tax authorities, according to Washington-based Global Financial Integrity.

For more than a year, the Internal Revenue Service, the feared tax-collecting agency of the US government, has been revving the engines and aiming a bulldozer at Switzerland's historic banking secrecy laws.

LONDON (Forbes) -- Swiss and other European banks are shunning American clients in the wake of the UBS tax evasion case.