Switzerland made bank secrecy a crime in 1934, and the night guard who took bank files from a UBS shredder in 1997 had to seek asylum in the United States

Swiss banks long said the 1934 bank secrecy law was written to protect money deposited by Jews persecuted by the Nazis. Historian Sébastien Guex of the University of Lausanne calls that account propaganda. His study in the Business History Review traces the law to the Depression and to French and German efforts to stop capital flight and tax evasion, including a 1932 French raid on Swiss bank offices in Paris that seized records of money moved across the border. In late 1996 and early 1997 class actions were filed in federal court in Brooklyn accusing Swiss banks of keeping Holocaust victims' assets. In January 1997 Christoph Meili, a guard from an outside security firm at Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich, found bank files set for the shredder at a time when shredding such records was forbidden. He took them home and gave them to a Jewish organisation, which passed them to the police. Zurich authorities investigated him for breaching bank secrecy, and the proceedings were later stopped. After threats he moved his family to the United States and received political asylum. In August 1998 the banks settled the lawsuits for $1.25 billion. Meili reportedly received $750,000. The claims process paid about $1.288 billion to more than 458,400 victims and heirs in more than 80 countries. In April 2009 Meili returned to Switzerland, reportedly without money.