A Lugano-headquartered bank has entered into a non-prosecution agreement with US authorities under the Swiss Bank Program.

Cornèr Banca, which offers private banking among its services, has signed an agreement with the US Department of Justice to avoid prosecution over undeclared US-related accounts. The bank will pay a penalty of $5.068 million.

Among the dozens of Swiss banks that have already reached deals with the DoJ under the Swiss Bank Program are the most recent ones of Aargauische Kantonalbank (AKB), Deutsche Bank's Swiss division and EFG International. Under the settlement, Cornèr agrees to cooperate in any related criminal or civil proceedings and show its implementation of controls to stop misconduct involving such secret accounts.

Lugano-headquartered Cornèr, which also has offices in Chiasso, Geneva, Locarno and Zurich, has two wholly-owned affiliates: Cornèr Banque (Luxembourg) and Bahamas-based Cornèr Bank (Overseas). The bank offers a range of traditional banking services and specializes in private banking, payment cards and securities trading.

Cornèr helped some of its US clients evade their tax obligations, file false federal tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service and hide overseas assets from the IRS, the department said. It opened and serviced accounts for US persons that it knew were likely not declared to the IRS or the US Department of the Treasury.

Between 2001 and 2008, Cornèr relationship managers traveled to the US on at least 10 occasions to visit existing clients. Cornèr also gave US clients the option of code names for their numbered accounts. Examples of the ones used include “Dumbledor,” “Windstopper,” “Rocking” and “Anticipation.” 

Since August 2008, Cornèr held 383 US-related accounts with over $351 million in assets.