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On August 29, 2013, the Swiss Bank Program was announced. The program was aimed to entice banks to provide information on U.S. citizens and people connected to the U.S. who had funds kept offshore and were not fulfilling requirements to report their offshore accounts annually.  The deadline for banks to come forward and alert the Department of Justice that they wanted to participate was December 31, 2013.  Banks were encouraged to come forward and tell the DOJ by this date if they believed they had broken the law by helping U.S.-related accountholders evade tax obligations.

Offshore banks have long provided a haven for people in the United States to keep their money and enjoy privacy.  This is no longer the case and has not been for a long time as the Department of Justice has been aggressively going after banks that facilitate tax evasion.