More than 200 raids on homes of suspected tax cheats were conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, the German news agency DPA reported, citing prosecutors in the western city of Koblenz.
Employees of Credit Suisse and its Clariden Leu and Neue Aargauer Bank subsidiaries were also probed for aiding tax fraud, according to the prosecutors.
The raids follow the purchase of a CD containing 40,000 data sets on suspected tax-dodgers in Swiss banks.
Authorities in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate announced Tuesday they had bought the data for four million euros ($5.3 million) and hope to recover tax revenues worth 500 million euros nationwide.
Credit Suisse said it has been urging its German clients to settle their tax situation.
"We've been telling our German clients to settle their tax situation and if there is a problem, to solve it," said a Credit Suisse spokesman.
Germans were long among the top clients for Swiss banks, but following increasing pressure from German tax authorities a number of Swiss banks are apparently shifting their strategy.
Earlier this month the Swiss daily Tages-Anzeiger reported that Credit Suisse and Julius Bär banks sent their German clients letters demanding they submit proof their accounts were declared to German tax authorities or have them closed.
A mooted tax deal between the two countries would have resolved the situation by having Switzerland's notoriously secretive banks paying a tax rate of 26.4 percent on German holdings.
However the deal was blocked by Germany's upper house — the Bundesrat — for failing to go far enough against tax dodgers.
Germany has been at the forefront of a push against tax havens and offshore banking and took a tough line in the bail-out talks for debt-hit Cyprus, charging that Russian tycoons have used the island's banks to dodge taxes and launder dirty money.
German authorities have previously purchased such CDs, a practice an association representing German taxpayers charges amounts to shady deals with criminals who are offering the data.
After similar such operations in the past, many German customers with Swiss bank accounts were urged to turn themselves in and pay taxes they had evaded.
GERMANY
Credit Suisse targeted in German tax evasion raids
German prosecutors have conducted hundreds of raids against suspected tax dodgers and Credit Suisse employees believed to have helped them, a news report said.
GERMANY
Germany cracks down on fake Covid vaccine documents
German police have set up a special team to fight a growing number of forged vaccine certificates being sold in the black market
Police in Cologne have warned of a group of fraudsters selling fake vaccination certificates, a growing problem the scale of which is still unclear.
The police said the fraudsters worked in encrypted Telegram chats, making investigations difficult, and were selling fake documents with all the stamps and signatures, including a mark about vaccination with BioNTech or AstraZeneca.
READ ALSO: Germany probes Covid-19 testing centres for fraud
The fraud involved both real traffic in fake documents as well as scams luring customers into paying €100.
People in Germany who are fully vaccinated can show their vaccination booklet, which has a stamp and a sticker inside. Those who don’t have a booklet get a piece of paper.
Covid health passes are currently being rolled out across the EU, with a European health passport expected to be available from mid-June.
READ ALSO: What’s the latest on how the EU’s ‘Covid passports’ will work for travellers?
Over 44% of the adult population in Germany has received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, and more than 18% of Germans have been fully vaccinated.
German police have said forged coronavirus vaccine documents are becoming an increasing problem.
Last month, a couple in Baden-Württemberg was accused of selling fake coronavirus vaccination certificates.
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