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In 1934, the Swiss Federal Parliament explicitly introduced the notion of bank secrecy for the first time in a section of the law and created criminal sanctions for the violation thereof. There are two traditionally accepted interpretations of this event: Nazi espionage and pressure from the French Left.

The historian Peter Hug maintains that the origin of the Swiss secrecy is to be found in France. In 1932, the radical Herriot government was supported by the Socialist party. The international financial crisis made preparing the national budget a perilous exercise. Herriot had planned an austerity program that was difficult to defend before a left-wing parliament. That was when the Basler Handelbank affair broke out.

The president and vice-president of the commercial bank in Basle were arrested by the French police. In their trunks, the Parisian investigators found the list of 2,000 French clients who had confidentially deposited their holdings in Switzerland. They represented all of French high society: a few senators, a former minister, bishops, generals and manufacturers.

The Chamber of Deputies set the stage for a raging debate. The Socialist deputy Fabien Albertin denounced capitalism and tax deserters. As he had ties with the central customs office, he was able to obtain a copy of the list of the accused and revealed its contents in defiance of State secret. He assessed the amount of the French tax loss at 9 million francs and called for the government to organize a genuine tax extradition through agreements with the other countries. The Minister of Finance jumped at the opportunity and announced that he would negotiate with the Swiss government for legal authority over the accounts of French citizens. The Left supported the initiative and demanded an inventory of French taxpayer assets in order to avoid any tax desertion whatsoever. To no avail, the Right denounced a maneuver that aimed only to justify passing an austerity budget.

The debate was relayed in the French press. Le Figaro, representing the interests of the Right, waxed indignant over an anticonstitutional debate, in which the separation of powers and State secret had been flouted. What is more, this newspaper recalled that the deputies paid tax on only half of their premiums, while a small group of 8,600 taxpayers - downright "suckers" - paid half of the global tax.

As for the Communist paper L'Humanité, it denounced the "2,000 bourgeois compromised in a massive organized tax fraud scandal". A list of 150 names was published, while the newspaper Le Temps gave way to black humor: "Contraband is not something to be reprimanded. The government was wrong and whoever manages to wrong it is hailed by all".

The Handelsbank bankers were questioned and summoned to open their registers. They sought refuge behind the jurisprudence of the Federal Court that called upon bankers to retain absolute confidence on their clients' files. There were heavy threats. The Herriot government presented its budget that projected placing bank operations under tax authority surveillance: opening accounts, renting safes, all had to be declared by the banks to the tax administration. But on 18 December the Herriot government was brought down, the affair lost its political clout and became old news. All of the accused benefited from a dismissed case by reason of procedural flaw.

The debate did, however, have a strong impact on Swiss conscience. The increasingly flagrant State interference with the private sphere, as much in France as in Germany, put the country's editorial writers in a flutter. An ever widening gap was forming between this development and the liberal beliefs of the Swiss. Refusing to follow along the same downhill path, they came to a consensus on the necessity to defend bank secrecy and the economic interests of the country as a whole. A country of this size can only defend its independence by means of the law. With no convincing force to affront its powerful neighbors, the Swiss government had to be able to rely on a clear and indisputable law that would prohibit it from violating bank secrecy, even under the influence of pressure.

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