Switzerland believes it can clinch a deal with US authorities to end investigations of those of its banks helping wealthy Americans evade taxes, the country's finance minister said on Saturday.
"I think we will find a deal and that we will have a solution," Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said in an interview with Swiss television on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.
Widmer-Schlumpf said she would meet US attorney-general Eric Holder in the next few weeks in her latest bid to end US tax investigations of a number of Swiss banks, including Credit Suisse and Julius Baer.
"We are in very close discussions now," she told a news conference at the forum in Davos but refused to give a timetable for more talks on the thorny issue, which have dragged on for two years.
"We have our ideas; they have their ideas, but we are both obliged to find a solution."
Dozens of Swiss bankers and their clients have been indicted in recent years following a 2009 agreement by UBS, the biggest Swiss bank, to enter into a deferred-prosecution agreement, turn over 4450 client names and pay a $780-million fine after admitting to criminal wrongdoing in selling tax-evasion services to wealthy Americans.
The negotiations were widely seen to be gaining impetus after Swiss private bank Wegelin & Co said earlier this month that it would close permanently after pleading guilty to helping Americans dodge taxes through secret accounts.
Switzerland wants the investigations dropped in exchange for the payment of fines and the transfer to US authorities of the names of thousands of US clients.
Widmer-Schlumpf refused to rule out the possibility that banks other than Wegelin would be indicted but said she had been given a verbal promise by US financial authorities that they would refrain from "unfriendly actions" during the negotiations.
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