A Swiss spy allegedly monitoring German finance officials who hunt cross-border tax cheats also ran a mole in a state finance ministry office, media reports said on Thursday. Die Welt daily reported the man's alleged mission was to identify German tax investigators involved in the purchase of "tax cheat" data CDs, which have upset German-Swiss relations in the past. The information provided reportedly helped Swiss authorities file charges of breaching Swiss banking laws and economic espionage against three German tax investigators. The threat of dawn raids compelled thousands more German tax cheats to come forward and report their accounts abroad, and pay back taxes on the interest earned plus fines. North Rhine-Westphalia alone has bought 11 CDs, which it says have led 120,000 German citizens to self-report Swiss bank accounts.

Source: The Local May 04, 2017 15:45 UTC