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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/0....

Aug 9 (Reuters) - The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia is pursuing tax evaders who secretly stashed cash in Switzerland, prosecutors said on Thursday, after they obtained new bank data from a presumed whistleblower...

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A spokesman for the NRW prosecutor declined to say which bank or banks the latest information came from but the Financial Times Deutschland reported that the towns of Wuppertal and Aachen had purchased two CDs from a whistleblower, including data from UBS.

"Data from a CD has been made available to us. We are investigating .. in relation to tracking down tax evasion," said prosecutor Bernd Bieniossek.

The paper said the first disc carried data from Switzerland's biggest bank, including "big names", and that the second disc contained information on a smaller bank .

Despite ongoing talks on the Swiss-German tax deal, NRW is reported to have repeatedly bought such CDs over the past year.

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Senior SPD member Joachim Poss said that buying the tax data was the best weapon to use to combat tax evasion.

"The purchase (of CDs) is far more effective than a lousily agreed tax deal with Switzerland which is full of loopholes," Poss told Reuters.

Asked if there was a chance the tax deal could succeed, he said: "I hope not. This agreement is not in the interests of the honest German taxpayer. There will be an amnesty on tax crime," he said.

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The Swiss have reacted angrily to the CD purchases and even issued arrest warrants earlier this year for three German tax investigators they accused of buying secret tax data...