History Main / SwissBankAccount

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[[quoteright:350:[[Webcomic/{{Polandball}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/swissbank.png]]]]

* In the ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'' adventure ''[[Recap/TintinFlight714 Flight 714]]'', there is an amoral corporate executive who is abducted so the villain can obtain the details of his Swiss bank account.

* ''ComicBook/DeadpoolVsThePunisher'': One crossover has a variation: a criminal empire founded on the absolute secrecy of its accounts. The secret is [[spoiler:the villain's son, who knows the list of the account codes by heart]]. In the end the villain (who'd hired ComicBook/{{Deadpool}} to protect him from [[ComicBook/ThePunisher Frank]]) turns on Deadpool, and ends about as well as you could expect of someone pissing two of Marvel's more graphically violent heroes.

* ''Fanfic/TheKarmaOfLies'': Lila has one, though she privately observes that it's literally just a normal bank account that happens to be located in Switzerland... one that she's kept largely untouched until she needed it.

* In the film version of ''Film/TheBourneIdentity'', the amnesiac hero starts out with no clue to his identity except the details of a Swiss bank account.
* Film/JamesBond:
** ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'': After the two scientists complete the submarine tracking system, Stromberg transfers $10 million into their Swiss bank accounts. [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness He then kills them]], and cancels the transfers.
** In ''Film/{{Octopussy}}'' it's mentioned that the anonymous seller offering a Faberge egg for auction at Sotheby has a numbered Swiss bank account. That doesn't stop [=MI6's=] art expert from guessing (correctly) that the seller is Russian, given that the eggs haven't come from any legitimate source and therefore must have been smuggled out from behind the UsefulNotes/IronCurtain.

* ''Film/Interceptor2022''. The heroine overhears the BigBad using an apparent code over the radio: ZSB 1996. She realises the letters stand for Zurich Schweitz Bank and therefore he's not the WellIntentionedExtremist he's pretending to be.
* ''Film/TheSpanishPrisoner''.

* ''Film/TheOrder''. The character Ben Nur has one.

* ''Film/FunWithDickAndJane'': The local bad guy has stashed all his plundered money in an account like this (it's never mentioned what country it belongs to).
* A group of mercenaries are being briefed in the comedy ''Film/{{Water|1985}}'':

* At the end of ''Film/FXMurderByIllusion'', Rollie and Leo use Rollie's special effects makeup expertise (and the stolen account information) to drain [=Nick DeFranco=]'s Swiss bank account of nearly ten million dollars before the Swiss bankers find out that Nick has been killed.
* In the film ''Film/SamuraiCop'', the villian Fujiyama is accused of being a 'death merchant' who deposits his vast riches into a Swiss account during a {{narm}}y speech by the eponymous hero.
* Implied in ''Film/SherlockHolmesAGameOfShadows''. When Holmes and Moriarty have a discussion about Moriarty's assets, Moriarty claims that he's rather fond of Switzerland. They know how to respect a man's privacy there, especially when he has a large personal fortune.

* Subverted in ''Film/TheLastStand''. The BigBad is fond of bribing cops to get his way. When it's suspected that he's done so, the FBI chief has his department investigated, easily tracks down the one bribed through a Swiss bank account, and even chastises said mole for thinking it was beyond their reach.
* In ''Film/TheThomasCrownAffair1968'', Thomas deposits a large pile of small bills in Switzerland after the bank heist in Boston. Investigator Vicky observes that the Swiss are "notoriously casual about certain formalities," like searching airline baggage.
* In ''Film/{{Munich}}'', Avner opens these for his mission to assassinate the Black September leadership. He and each of the men on his team gets one to hold their accumulated salary, and the other receives $250,000 for operational expenses. The Mossad accountant sternly tells him to keep receipts to justify using the unlimited funds. He left out the bit where Mossad has the authority to remove the funds from their accounts, which they do [[YouCanNeverLeave after the protagonist decides to quit]].
* ''Film/TheDayOfTheJackal'': The titular Jackal has a bank account in Switzerland where the OAS is to deposit the money they're paying him to assassinate President de Gaulle.
* The titular assassin for hire in ''Film/TheJackal'' uses these to accept payments on contracts. The FSB (former KGB prior to the USSR's dissolution) were among his clients, the agent currently working with the FBI to stop his latest plan noting that payments to him in the past were made to accounts either in the Bahamas or Hong Kong.
* ''Film/{{Tenet}}'' has the freeport system being used in this way by Andrei Sator. Assets such as art can be stored indefinitely in a secure warehouse in an international airport without the client having to pay import duties. It's explicitly compared to the Swiss banking system.
* ''Film/TheMenu'': The tortillas in the chicken taco portion of the meal are laser-printed with the guests' secrets; the ones for the tech bros depict their Cayman Islands offshore accounts amongst various other criminal activities.
-->'''Soren:''' Dude, chill, it's a fucking taco.\\
'''Bryce:''' A fucking taco that ''might'' hold up in court?!
* ''Film/TheNegotiation'': Shady CEO Koo Gwan-su has a sufficiently shady Swiss account that Tae-gu asks him to restore as one of his conditions.
* ''Film/JohnnyMnemonic'': Johnny's contacts in Beijing make a point to tell him that half of the fee Johnny is owed for transporting their data was wired in advance to a "Swiss account", as they were instructed to do.
* ''Film/TheWolfOfWallStreet'' features a memorable negotiation scene between Jordan Bellfort and a Swiss banker.
* ''Film/TheWonderfulStoryOfHenrySugar'' has a benevolent version. Henry's accountant John moves to Switzerland so he can legally handle the money Henry wins from cheating at gambling around the world, which is in turn used to set up several charitable organizations for children.

* Creator/RobertLudlum
** In ''[[Literature/TheBourneSeries The Bourne Identity]]'', the {{amnesiac hero}} starts out with no clue to his identity except the number of a Swiss bank account. This doesn't ultimately turn out to be a sign that he was a villain, but he did have something to hide.
** Ludlum plays with the lazy version of the trope in ''The Ostermann Weekend''. The protagonist discovers that a man who may be a foreign spy has a Swiss bank account, and considers this to be evidence, but it turns out that the man is innocent, and his response to being accused of having a Swiss bank account is basically, "Yes, I do. What's your point?"

* ''Literature/JackRyan'':
** In ''Literature/RainbowSix'', Dmitri Popov sets up a Swiss Bank Account for the terrorists he's hired, as a secure way to transfer their payment to them. Once it becomes obvious that they're going to fail at the mission, he transfers all the money to an account he set up for himself.
** In ''Literature/ClearAndPresentDanger'', the mystique of this trope is bluntly deconstructed, not only because the Cartel having their drug accounts in Swiss banks does nothing to protect them from seizure once their illegality is discovered, but it's explicitly pointed out the only thing that makes the banks more secure is that fact the countries they reside in weren't invaded as much, giving the illusion of security.

* In the Creator/StephenKing short story "In the Deathroom", the protagonist thinks that "in the end there might only be one way to tell the thugs from the patriots: when they saw their own death rising in your eyes like water, patriots made speeches. The thugs, on the other hand, gave you the number of their Swiss bank account and offered to put you on-line."
* People in the various Creator/JohnGrisham novels prefer accounts in the Grand Caymans to accounts in Switzerland. Even the good guys do their banking there.
* In ''Literature/TheDogsOfWar'' a CorruptCorporateExecutive is buying shares from an eccentric heiress and is cautioned by the Swiss banker not to put his bank's name on the cheque as little old ladies tend to think of Swiss banks accounts as fulfilling this trope.

* In the Literature/ModestyBlaise novel ''The Night of Morningstar'', it's mentioning in passing that all the members of the terrorist group are getting their cut paid into Swiss bank accounts.
* ''On Wings of Eagles'' by Ken Follett. Ross Perot and his executives are approached by a shady character who offers to get their colleagues out of an Iranian prison in exchange for a considerable amount of money to be paid into an escrow account (meaning the money isn't handed over till after the deal). After debating the matter, they decide to refuse because they suspect [[AgentProvocateur they're being set up for a bribery charge]].
* PlayedWith in Frederick Forsyth's The Fist of God: The account is ''Austrian'', not Swiss, and the client's identity is known to the banker, which for UsefulNotes/{{Mossad}}, who are trying to deduce the identity of Saddam Hussein's mole so they can stop relying on them for intel, means HoneyTrapping the banker's secretary.
* One figures into the plot of ''Literature/{{Fatherland}}'' as [[spoiler: the hiding place of documents providing evidence of the (long ago completed) Holocaust]]. The original purpose of such accounts is also touched upon - the Gestapo is said to be particularly suspicious of people with them.
* ''Literature/InDeath'': [[CorruptCop Chief Simpson]] uses one to hide his illegal transactions.
* In ''Literature/ACollegeOfMagics'', one of the minor antagonists turns out to have embezzled a lot of money and stashed it in a bank account in Zurich.
* ''Literature/MindstarRising'': Teenage heiress Julia Evans gets the bank records of someone who's plotting against her company by [[ArbitrarilyLargeBankAccount buying the entire bank!]] She points out that it's actually a good investment.
* ''OUT'' of Pierre Rey tells the story of a bunch of ''mafiosi'' trying to get their funds (2 billion US$ in 1977) back from a numbered bank account in a Zurich bank after their dishonest lawyer tried to abscond with the funds and gave these gangsters a false number and codename.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* The VillainProtagonist of ''Kessler'' has a Swiss bank account containing wealth looted from occupied Europe during [=WW2=], and gaining access to these funds is a source of tension with his fellow Nazis, between the younger members who want to fund a neo-Nazi resurgence and the older generation who just want to live comfortably in exile.
* In ''Series/ThePretender'', episode "Collateral Damage", Jarod hacks into the villain of the week's Swiss bank account to confirm that he's been receiving payoffs from a drug cartel.
* ''Series/BurnNotice''
** Episode "Friends and Enemies":
--->'''Michael Westen:''' Who do you work for?\\
'''Gregory Hart:''' I work for an 11-digit Swiss bank account number, and an anonymous email address.

** In one episode a government agent is trying to bully Michael so he has Barry set up an offshore account in the agent's name. They then move the same few thousand dollars in and out of the account repeatedly to make it seem like the agent is receiving payoffs through the account. Michael then blackmails the agent with this to have him back off.

** In "the Council" episode, the mobsters are using a Swiss bank account.
** In "The Bride", the villain of the week is a mob courier trying to get his employer's money to Switzerland to be deposited in one.
** In "The Legacy", the team is sent after a group of Neo-Nazis trying to get to a cache of NaziGold believed to be in one. The account actually contains an envelope holding a few hundred deutschmarks. [[spoiler:And a microdot on the envelope itself, showing a map to where the gold actually is.]]
* In the ''Series/HumanTarget'' Season 2 premiere Ilsa (a good person) has a vault in a Swiss bank which can only be entered with retina scans of both Ilsa and her late husband; the bad guy uses her (in a hostage situation) and [[BorrowedBiometricBypass her dead husband's eyeball, removed from his body]] to get in to steal their billions. In another episode she transfers a couple mil from her Swiss bank to a local bank specifically in order to draw out some {{Dirty Cop}}s who were looking for her; in that same episode the main bad guy has an offshore bank account in Barbados where he stores his ill-gotten gains.
* An episode of ''Series/MurphyBrown'' had a millionaire fall in love with Murphy and shower her with expensive gifts to try to get her to marry him, until he flat out tries to bribe her with a large check. She says no, the guy finally relents...and proposes to Kay, who immediately accepts. When Murphy is horrified and calls Kay out on this, her response is, "Don't worry. I'll have this money in my Cayman Islands account before we're within ''miles'' of an altar." (Because StatusQuoIsGod the guy divorces her and takes back the money.)
* The unsophisticated drug lord Marlo Stanfield from ''Series/TheWire'' has to be introduced to this trope (Antillean off-shore version) and even then he decides to visit the bank in person to verify that his money is actually there.
* In a ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' sketch, Creator/SteveMartin lists his top wishes, including $30 million a month deposited directly into his Swiss bank account.
* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' give us Shadow Depositories; privately-held banks that service the criminal scum of the Uncharted Territories. Their security measures are every bit as good as the top secret, maximum security military bases of any of the warring stellar nations.
* There's one in ''Smiley's People'', the TV adaptation of the spy novel series ''Literature/TheQuestForKarla''.
* ''Series/Daredevil2015'': In season 3, Wilson Fisk is laundering his money through shell companies that are supposedly based in other countries and have charters to do business in the United States that were filed by his lawyers. Red Lion National Bank, the bank which moves his money around, also is mentioned to have a branch in the Caymans.
* ''Series/LukeCage2016'': Mariah Dillard is using Caymans banks to move the proceeds from a shady stock deal she makes with Piranha Jones at the start of season 2.

--->'''Cowley:''' What was the drill? Check in; wait in the hotel until contacted?
--->'''Van Neikerk:''' [[NonAnswer Why don't you tell me?]]
--->'''Cowley:''' Half the money already in a Swiss bank?
--->'''Van Neikerk:''' That's right, [[DeadpanSnarker I took over Hitler's account]].

** A variation occurs in "The Untouchables" where Bodie (posing as the middleman for a contract killing) insists on being paid in Swiss francs. However in this case it's to leave a money trail as the person paying for the hit has to make special arrangements to get the money converted after the banks have closed.
* ''Series/BreakingBad'': Gus Fring pays his underlings through offshore Cayman Islands bank accounts. The DEA accidentally discovers these accounts hidden in a confiscated picture frame, freezing the accounts, leading to the bulk of the drama in the first half of Season 5, as Mike is forced back in a partnership with Walt to recoup the lost money, as that pay was what keeps the underlings from ratting them out after they get arrested.
* Con artists Charlie, Elizabeth, and Samantha from ''Series/BirdsOnTheWing'' keep their bank accounts in Geneva. In "Charlie Tries to Con Elizabeth and Samantha", Charles is humiliated by the bank's manager leading him to try to trick Elizabeth and Samantha out of their money in an attempt to feel better, which ends in disaster in "Charlie's in Geneva, Girls are in Tokyo", when he tries to meet the girls in Geneva, unaware they have swindled him and run off to Tokyo with his money.

* "Foot of Pride" by Music/BobDylan.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Champions}}'' adventure ''Red Doom''. When Colonel Vasalov hires some supervillains to attack the heroes, he promises to pay each of them with $100,000 in a Swiss bank account.
* In the D&D setting ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'', House Kundarak fills this role, a Dragonmarked House of dwarven bankers from a mountainous country who will give anyone who can afford it a high-security vault.
* In the game ''TabletopGame/{{Junta}}'', the object is to [[CorruptPolitician divert as much money as possible]] into your family's Swiss bank account.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Tropicana}}'': A ''TabletopGame/SavageWorlds'' setting. Set in the [[BananaRepublic Presidential Republic of San Jose]], the secretive ''El Banco'' is both the financial center of the entire country and known worldwide for providing confidential banking services for anyone. Including known criminal and terrorist groups.

* ''Druglord'': The player-character's bank is supposed to be a Swiss bank.
* In the game ''VideoGame/{{Tropico}}'', one of the scoring metrics is how much money you can embezzle into your Swiss bank account. El Presidente can earn funds through the Building Permit edict (which increases all building costs by 20% to earn 10% of the cost), setting childhood museums to "Retirement Fund" mode, setting the customs office to "Customs Duty Evasion" (which requires paying customs officers $25 each to keep quiet), setting banks to "Slush Fund" mode (which only works while the treasury is positive), turning ruins into excavation sites, and building the mausoleum. Until the ''Modern Times'' expansion, there was no use for the Swiss account. In ''Modern Times'', a minimum Swiss bank balance is required to upgrade the palace to a presidency and set water treatment plants, sanatoria, and SWAT [=HQs=] to "Happy Powder," "Psych Ward," and "Personal Death Squad" modes.
* In ''VideoGame/DayOfTheTentacle'', Dr. Edison has a Swiss Bank account that's almost completely depleted. One of the more significant puzzles in the game requires you to get access to the account through trickery, then find a way to get a lot of money into it, so that you can use the money to buy a really big diamond.

* 80% of your loot in ''VideoGame/{{PAYDAY 2}}'' goes into an "offshore account." It can only be used to purchase contracts (rather than waiting for them to become available or joining another player's game), go infamous (the first five ranks costs $200M), and bet in "Offshore Paydays" for additional loot drops.
* It's revealed in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'' that the Allies (plus China) pooled their funds together for the war effort in World War II and kept them hidden in various locations around the world with Switzerland being one of them.

* ''Franchise/GIJoe''

** In the ''WesternAnimation/GIJoeExtreme'' episode "Chips and a Cold, Cold Drink", Rampage mentions he'll transfer the money he got from a deal to his Swiss bank account.
* The Cayman Islands version appears in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', "Bart the Fink":
-->'''Cayman Islands guy:''' ''(on phone)'' I'm sorry, I can't divulge information about that customer's secret illegal account.\\
''(hangs up)''\\

''(sighs)''\\

* ''WesternAnimation/BikerMiceFromMars'' has made reference to a "Swiss Cheese account" on two occasions.
** The episode "Pitfall" has the series' main antagonist Lawrence Limburger and lawyer Perry Provoloni attempt to blackmail their Plutarkian leader Lord Camembert with proof that he is hiding embezzled funds in his Swiss Cheese account.
** The three-part OriginsEpisode "Once Upon a Time on Mars" has Limburger use forged release notes for his former superior Dominic T. Stilton's Swiss Cheese account to bribe the Martian government into allowing Plutark to invade Mars.
* In an early episode of ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', when the Griffins inherit a huge mansion, Peter fully adopts a snooty rich attitude and mentions he has one of these. Lois tells him he doesn't, and he tells his conversation partners that he's keeping it secret from Lois in case things don't work out.
* In the Thanksgiving episode of ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', Rich Buckner attempts to use [[ItMakesSenseInContext the golden wishbone of a turducken bred only once every million years]] to wish for the rights to Thanksgiving as well as a large sum of money hidden in an untraceable Swiss bank account.
* Miles Mayhem, leader of V.E.N.O.M., is said to have a Swiss bank account in the ''WesternAnimation/{{MASK}}'' episode "Bad Vibrations".
* In the ''[[WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}} Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles]]'' episode "Genesis Undone", Dr. Anton Sevarius attempts to trick Thailog into injecting himself with the clone virus at an advanced stage by claiming that he'll give him the cure if he sends him a large amount of money through his Swiss account.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/CentralPark'', Season 1 episode "[[Recap/CentralParkS1E5DogSprayAfternoon Dog Spray Afternoon]]", Paige discovers that the supposed multiple companies that are buying the mayor's real estate are actually just one company and that said company originated in Panama. Marvin tells her that it's all but impossible to find out who owns a Panamanian shell corporation because it's a very long process to have the information revealed. Paige would have waited six months to have even a vague idea on who's behind it if it wasn't for [[AllKnowingSingingNarrator Birdie]] blurting out that Bitsy is the one who owns the corporation.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/LittlestPetShop2012'' episode where Sharukh comes to visit, he boasts about his Swiss bank account is located in Germany.

No self-respecting big-money criminal or superspy or would stash his loot in anything but a legendarily secretive Swiss bank account. In fiction, a MillionairePlayboy can walk into a luxuriously appointed bank office with a BriefcaseFullOfMoney and the staff discreetly add it to his secret, numbered account with no paperwork. In the hands of particularly lazy thriller writers, a non-Swiss character merely possessing a Swiss bank account is proof that a person is up to no good.

* ''OUT'' of Pierre Rey tells the story of a bunch of ''mafiosi'' trying to get their funds (2 billions of US$ on 1977) back from a numbered bank account in a Zurich bank, after their dishonest lawyer tried to abscond with the funds and gave these gangsters a false number and codename.

* ''Mindstar Rising'', by Creator/PeterFHamilton. Teenage heiress Julia Evans gets the bank records of someone who's plotting against her company by [[ArbitrarilyLargeBankAccount buying the entire bank!]] She points out that it's actually a good investment.

* It's revealed in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3'' that the Allies (plus China) pooled their funds together for the war effort in World War II and kept them hidden in various locations around the world with Switzerland being one of them.

In more recent stories, an account in an offshore tax haven, such as the UsefulNotes/CaymanIslands or Panama may be substituted.

In real life, the usefulness of these numbered accounts is limited, due to how hard it is to get one nowadays. The [[YodelLand Swiss]], well aware of their banks' increasing reputation as havens for no-good-niks (not particularly helped by their willingness to stash NaziGold, though they were originally formed to help people ''hide'' money from the Gestapo), require numerous references and a general OK from the person's country of origin. You can certainly get an account with a Swiss Bank - although if you're a foreign national, the bank ''will'' take a copy of your residence permit and passport details - but it will just be a regular bank account in UsefulNotes/{{Switzerland}}, not this trope. Some of the original anonymous accounts that gave rise to this trope do apparently still exist, but under current regulations they cannot be transferred to other people, so - eventually - every one of them will be closed.

** In ''Film/{{Octopussy}}'' it's mentioned that the anonymous seller offering a Faberge egg for auction at Sotheby has a numbered Swiss bank account. That doesn't stop [=MI6's=] art expert from guessing (correctly) that the seller is Russian, given that the eggs haven't come from any legitimate source and therefore must have been smuggled out from behind the Iron Curtain.

** In ''[[Literature/TheBourneSeries The Bourne Identity]]'', the amnesiac hero starts out with no clue to his identity except the number of a Swiss bank account. This doesn't ultimately turn out to be a sign that he was a villain, but he did have something to hide.

* ''Film/WolfOfWallStreet'' features a memorable negotiation scene between Jordan Bellfort and a Swiss banker.

* ''Film/TheWonderfulWorldOfHenrySugar'' has a benevolent version. Henry's accountant John moves to Switzerland so he can legally handle the money Henry wins from cheating at gambling around the world, which is in turn used to set up several charitable organizations for children.

* Jordan Belfort of ''Film/TheWolfOfWallStreet'' fame got done in this way. Steve Madden was a designer of women's shoes, and a childhood friend of Jordan Belfort's business partner Danny Porush. In 1993, Belfort and Proush's brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont took Madden's shoe company public. Thing is, Belfort, Porush and Madden owned the majority of the company's shares, which was a severe violation of federal law. When the Strattonites drove up the value of the stock, they got rich in the process. In order to hide his ill-gotten gains, Belfort smuggled cash to a Swiss bank. He disguised them under the name of an aunt of his wife Nadine, by convincing them he just wished to avoid paying taxes. How he smuggled the money was through his drug dealer Todd Garrett, whose wife conveniently happened to hold Swiss citizenship. Belfort was able to convince her and her family to hide the money in their luggage. They ultimately smuggled over $3 million into Swiss bank accounts before Belfort was busted by the FBI. To get a lighter sentence, Jordan agreed to wear a wire and rat out his friends and colleagues.

No self-respecting big-money criminal or superspy or would stash his loot in anything but a legendarily secretive Swiss bank acaccount. In fiction, a MillionairePlayboy can walk into a luxuriously appointed bank office with a BriefcaseFullOfMoney and the staff discreetly add it to his secret, numbered account with no paperwork. In the hands of particularly lazy thriller writers, a non-Swiss character merely possessing a Swiss bank account is proof that a person is up to no good.

No self-respecting big-money criminal or superspy or would stash his loot in anything but a legendarily secretive Swiss bank acaccount. In fiction, a MillionairePlayboy can walk into a luxuriously appointed bank office with a BriefcaseFullOfMoney snd the staff discreetly add it to his secret, numbered account with no paperwork. In the hands of particularly lazy thriller writers, a non-Swiss character merely possessing a Swiss bank account is proof that a person is up to no good.

No self-respecting big-money criminal would stash his loot in anything but a legendarily secretive Swiss bank account. In the hands of particularly lazy thriller writers, a non-Swiss character merely possessing a Swiss bank account is proof that a person is up to no good.

In more recent stories, an account in an offshore tax haven, such as the UsefulNotes/CaymanIslands, may be substituted.

See here for more RealLife information about UsefulNotes/Switzerland.

No self-respecting big-money criminal would stash his loot in anything but a legendarily secretive Swiss bank account. In the hands of particularly lazy thriller writers, a non-Swiss character merely possessing a Swiss bank account is proof positive that a person is up to no good.

In real life, the usefulness of these numbered accounts is limited, due to how hard it is to get one nowadays. The Swiss, well aware of their banks' increasing reputation as havens for no-good-niks (not particularly helped by their willingness to stash NaziGold, though they were originally formed to help people ''hide'' money from the Gestapo), require numerous references and a general OK from the person's country of origin. You can certainly get an account with a Swiss Bank - although if you're a foreign national, the bank ''will'' take a copy of your residence permit and passport details - but it will just be a regular bank account in UsefulNotes/{{Switzerland}}, not this trope. Some of the original anonymous accounts that gave rise to this trope do apparently still exist, but under current regulations they cannot be transferred to other people, so - eventually - every one of them will be closed.

[[NonIndicativeName Despite the name of the trope]], ''[[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible any]]'' [[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible work that uses an offshore account as a point of interest to the audience coming from]] ''[[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible any]]'' [[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible country can qualify]]. Heck, the country itself doesn't have to be mentioned, and it can even be a FictionalProvince.

No self-respecting big-money criminal would stash his loot in anything but a legendarily secretive Swiss bank account. In the hands of particularly lazy thriller writers, a non-swiss character merely possessing a Swiss bank account is proof positive that a person is up to no good.

** Ludlum plays with the lazy version of the trope in ''The Ostermann Weekend''. The protagonist discovers that a man who may be a foreign spy has a Swiss bank account, and considers this to be Evidence, but it turns out that the man is innocent, and his response to being accused of having a Swiss bank account is basically, "Yes, I do. What's your point?"

* In the ''Series/HumanTarget'' Season 2 premiere Ilsa (a a good person) has a vault in a Swiss bank which can only be entered with retina scans of both Ilsa and her late husband; the bad guy uses her (in a hostage situation) and [[BorrowedBiometricBypass her dead husband's eyeball, removed from his body]] to get in to steal their billions. In another episode she transfers a couple mil from her Swiss bank to a local bank specifically in order to draw out some {{Dirty Cop}}s who were looking for her; in that same episode the main bad guy has an offshore bank account in Barbados where he stores his ill-gotten gains.