The Swiss Federal Administrative Court issued a ruling Friday halting the transfer of UBS AG client data to the United States.The court said failure to fill out a tax form for the US authorities was not "tax fraud" and therefore under Swiss laws the client's information should not be disclosed. The case was brought by a US client of the Swiss bank and could affect some two dozen others.

This is the second ruling by the court calling into question Bern's plans to cooperate with the US by relaxing banking secrecy through the transfer of confidential data. The prior ruling said the government should not have transferred data last February on some 250 clients to the US.

In August, Switzerland's federal government reached a deal with the US, that at the time was expected to see the Swiss transfer some 4,500 names and data of clients to Washington. UBS admitted wrongdoing by its employees who had helped clients evade taxes. The Swiss government subsequently entered negotiations with the US, in order to reach a deal on the transfer of data given the previously strict banking secrecy laws.

Copyright Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 2010