Swiss Report First Appeals Filed in UBS Tax Case PARIS - Switzerland has received the first two appeals in the UBS tax case, a judicial official said Wednesday, just weeks after 500 Americans were notified that their data was to be transmitted to the U.S. Justice Department. The appeals were received by the Federal Administrative Court in Bern, Andrea Arcidiacono, a spokesman for the court, said by e-mail, adding that he could not comment further. The Swiss government agreed Aug. 19 to transfer to the U.S. authorities account data for Americans under certain conditions, backing down from a claim that doing so would violate its banking secrecy laws. None of the data have actually been divulged yet to the Americans. The government said Nov. 24 that it had processed 500 initial cases and notified the account holders that they had 30 days to appeal. The agreement calls for it to process the roughly 4,000 remaining dossiers by next autumn. Swiss tax lawyers have said most Americans would probably be better off in taking advantage of a U.S. Internal Revenue Service amnesty program. The IRS said last month that more than 14,700 Americans had recently chosen the amnesty, disclosing secret foreign bank accounts. The IRS did not detail how many were in Switzerland. UBS, based in Zurich, agreed in February to pay $780 million in fines in the to end U.S. criminal charges that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes. Speaking Wednesday in Bern, Hans-Rudolf Merz, the Swiss president, said the days of Swiss banks "systematically managing assets on which taxes were evaded, these times are over," Bloomberg News reported. The players have to realize that it's worth attracting customers with proper banking. Mr. Merz ruled out an "automatic exchange" of account information with other governments, but said Switzerland was willing to "expand existing cross-border cooperation within the framework of bilateral negotiations."