In January 2017, UBS Group AG General Counsel Markus Diethelm bragged to a journalist that the Swiss bank’s tax case may mark France’s entry into the big league of financial crimes enforcement.
“We could be the first company to work out a settlement” in the country, he told the reporter of French daily Le Figaro in an interview at the bank’s central Paris offices on Boulevard Haussmann, alluding to a new U.S.-style procedure of paying fines while not admitting guilt.
Several months earlier, UBS had dispatched one of its top attorneys to convince French lawmakers of the need to create ...