The Paris Court of Appeal refused on Monday to refer a priority constitutional issue (QPC) to the Constitutional Council. It was filed by the defense of the Swiss bank UBS, at the end of its appeal trial in March.

With the rejection of this QPC, the case can proceed without change and the Paris Court of Appeal will issue its judgment on September 27 next. Accused of illegal banking and aggravated laundering of tax evasion in France, UBS was sentenced to a record and unprecedented fine of 3.7 billion euros in the first instance in February 2019. Its French subsidiary, for its part, was fined 15 million euros for complicity. The two institutions were also ordered to pay 800 million euros in damages to the State, which filed a civil suit.

On appeal, last March, the Public Prosecutor's Office requested a fine of at least two billion euros. French tax lawyers, for their part, requested the payment of one billion euros in damages. UBS, which provided 450 million euros for this case, defends itself by arguing that the investigators never provided proof that the bank had systematically approached French customers to offer them to evade the Directorate General of Public Finances (