At a meeting on September 21, the government approved draft amendments to the agreement between the Russian Federation and Switzerland on the avoidance of double taxation, which provide for the transfer of data on accounts of Russian citizens in Swiss banks. Minister of Economic Development Elvira Nabiullina announced this on Friday.

Switzerland has already initialed this agreement, Interfax reports .

The United States, Great Britain and France have already carried out similar work with Switzerland, Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said earlier this week.

“Upon requests, we will receive information regarding accounts that evade taxes if we here on the territory of the Russian Federation initiate procedures to search for evasion or laundering in accordance with the established procedure,” noted the head of the Ministry of Finance. According to him, if there are signs of one or another illegal action, Russia will have the opportunity to receive information about the accounts of Russian citizens in Swiss banks.

President Dmitry Medvedev first announced such a possibility for Russia during a visit to Switzerland two years ago. Then the Swiss side expressed its readiness to meet the Russian authorities halfway and provide information about the accounts of its clients, if necessary.

In Switzerland, since 1934, there has been a law that explicitly requires secrecy from bankers, and banks that violate the law face heavy fines and managers face imprisonment. The only condition for disclosing the secret was suspicion of corruption or money laundering. It was only in 2009 that Switzerland announced that it would relax its bank secrecy laws, bringing them in line with the standards set by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The government approved the draft agreement on accounts of Russians in Switzerland