Com­ment: The man who pur­loined bank records that revealed that Ger­man nation­als were using for­eign bank accounts to avoid pay­ing tax­es has alleged­ly “com­mit­ted sui­cide” in a Swiss prison.

How con­ve­nient. One can but won­der who might ben­e­fit from this.

“Sus­pect in Swiss Tax Data Sale to Ger­many Found Dead in Sus­pect­ed Sui­cide” by Car­olyn Ban­del; bloomberg.com; 10/1/2010.

Excerpt: An Aus­tri­an man held in con­nec­tion with the theft of Swiss bank-account details and their sale to Ger­many is believed to have killed him­self in prison.

Guards at a region­al jail in the Swiss cap­i­tal of Bern dis­cov­ered the 42-year-old man dead in his cell on Sept. 29 as they came to bring him break­fast, the Swiss fed­er­al prosecutor’s office said in an e‑mailed state­ment. He had been detained since mid-Sep­tem­ber on sus­pi­cion of eco­nom­ic espi­onage, it said.

The sus­pect, who wasn’t iden­ti­fied, was held in an inves­ti­ga­tion into the alleged theft of client data from Swiss banks, which were sub­se­quent­ly sold to Ger­man tax inves­ti­ga­tors, pros­e­cu­tion spokes­woman Jeanette Balmer said today by e‑mail. Offi­cials in the Ger­man state of Baden-Wuert­tem­berg said in August they were using infor­ma­tion from an infor­mant to iden­ti­fy pos­si­ble tax dodgers who stashed funds in Switzer­land.  . . .