NEW YORK, Feb 19: UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, agreed on Wednesday to divulge names of well-heeled Americans whom the US authorities suspect of using offshore accounts at the bank to evade taxes, the New York Times said on Thursday.

The decision would end the famous Swiss tradition of secret “Swiss bank accounts” forever.

The bank admitted conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay $780 million to settle a sweeping federal investigation into its activities.

The newspaper said: “It is unclear how many of its clients’ names UBS will divulge. US Federal prosecutors have been examining about 19,000 accounts at the bank, but UBS ultimately may disclose the identities of only a few hundred customers.”

But to some, turning over any names at all heralds the end of the secret Swiss bank account, whose traditions date to the Middle Ages, the Times noted.

“The Swiss are saying that this is the end of Swiss banking as they knew it,” said Jack Blum, an offshore tax specialist. “Nobody will trust the security of the Swiss bank account.”

As part of the settlement, UBS agreed to cooperate with a broad summons issued by the Justice Department to turn over the names. Under the terms of a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, the bank and its executives could be indicted if UBS didn’t identify the customers, according to the newspaper.

UBS has said it is closing the offshore accounts of its American clients. But under the deal with the United States authorities, the bank must provide periodic written evidence of that to prosecutors. UBS earned $200 million annually from the business.

Prosecutors suspect that from late 2002 to 2007, UBS helped American clients illegally hide $20 billion, letting them evade $300 million a year in taxes, the newspaper said.

In a striking admission, UBS said that from 2000 through 2007, some of its private bankers and managers had “participated in a scheme to defraud the United States” and the IRS by helping American clients set up and conceal offshore accounts. The scheme involved falsifying or not properly obtaining or filing certain tax forms required of both the bank and its clients.

UBS’s offshore private banking business once employed some 60 private bankers in Lugano, Zurich and Geneva. Prosecutors claimed UBS referred clients to lawyers and accountants who set up secret offshore entities to conceal assets from the IRS.

The Times revealed that UBS urged some American clients to destroy records and to stash watches, jewellery and artwork that they had bought with money hidden offshore in safe deposit boxes in Switzerland. The bank also encouraged them to use Swiss credit cards so the IRS could not track purchases.