The Zurich-based asset manager Swisspartners said on Saturday it would pay a $4.4m (£2.6m) fine to avoid prosecution over its past assistance to US tax dodgers.

The US deputy attorney general, James Cole, thanked the firm for its "extraordinary cooperation".



The agreement is part of a US push to find tax dodgers and punish the banks that help them. Fourteen Swiss banks, including Credit Suisse, the country's second-biggest, are officially under US criminal investigation, while many others are opting to acknowledge past wrongs and accept fines to avoid prosecution.



Credit Suisse is expected soon to be slapped with fines of at least $1bn, as well as possible criminal charges.

A damning Senate report found that Credit Suisse at its peak in 2006 had more than 22,000 US customers with Swiss accounts whose assets stood as high as $12bn – mainly undeclared to US tax authorities.

In February the chief executive, Brady Dougan, apologised to senators for the bank's actions, conceding it had undertaken elaborate efforts to gain new, secret American clients, but blamed the wrongdoing on a small band of rogue employees.

In 2009, Switzerland's largest bank, UBS, was forced to acknowledge it had used Swiss banking secrecy laws to help its US clients avoid paying taxes at home, and had to pay a $780m fine.

Between 2001 and 2011, Swisspartners helped US clients "in opening and maintaining undeclared foreign bank accounts". Such actions lead to an approximate loss to the US taxman of $900,000.



Swisspartners will compensate that amount, as well as $3.5m representing the fees it earned in helping US clients skirt the law.



"The US tax issue is resolved," the Zurich-based asset manager's parent company, the Lichtensteinische Landesbank (LLB Vaduz), said in a statement.

Swisspartners and the Justice Department signed a "non-prosecution agreement" on Friday, Liechtenstein's oldest bank said, stressing that provisions had been made to cover the multimillion-dollar fine and it would not have an impact on the asset manager's earnings.