An employee of Bank Sarasin has confessed to leaking information about a currency transaction by the wife of Swiss National Bank chairman, Philipp Hildebrand.
The bank revealed on Tuesday that the employee, who worked in the bank’s IT sector and who had subsequently handed himself over to police, had given the information to a lawyer with close links to the right-wing People’s Party.
„According to the employee, this lawyer then arranged a meeting with [People’s Party deputy chairman] Christoph Blocher, which took place on 11 November 2011,“ the bank said.
It added that it “terminated its employment relationship” with the employee, and reserved the right to take legal action.
Dollar purchase
The revelations concern the purchase of dollars by Kashya Hildebrand on August 15. She is said to have resold them about three weeks later, after the SNB set a minimum exchange rate of the franc against the euro.
The Swiss media have reported that the sum in question was about SFr500,000 and her profit when the dollar rose as a result of the new exchange floor is said to have been about SFr50,000.
Mrs Hildebrand told German-language television on Tuesday evening that since she had worked in the financial sector for 15 years, she continued to follow the markets closely and had made the purchase because the dollar was “at a record low and was almost ridiculously cheap”.
She said the purchase had been declared to the bank the next day, and it had made no objection.
An internal inquiry by the SNB last month said she had not infringed internal rules.
Mrs Hildebrand owns an art gallery in Zurich. She told the television that 70 to 80 per cent of the gallery’s transactions were conducted in dollars.
Blocher has made it known through his spokesman that he did not wish to comment. He has repeatedly criticized Hildebrand in the past for his policies as SNB chairman.
The SNB was given exclusive rights to print money in Switzerland and charged with ensuring price stability.
It has the legal status of a joint stock company, with Switzerland’s 26 cantons each holding a significant share in the bank.
The SNB is obliged to hand over two-thirds of its excess profits to the cantons each year and a further third to the government.
In the 1970s, the SNB intervened in the currency markets to stop the franc gaining in value against the German Deutschmark.
The operation was considered a success as it halted the franc’s rise, but it resulted in rampant inflation in the early 1980s.
The SNB was reorganised in the 1990s to turn it into a more streamlined organisation. The central bank’s independence was also written into the Swiss constitution, with the changed version coming into force in 2000 after a referendum.
The SNB’s independence was reiterated in the revised National Bank Act in 2004. At the same time, the SNB’s supervisory council was given greater strength to oversee operational standards.