LGT Group, which is wholly owned by the Alpine principality's ruling family, said it would file charges against a former employee previously convicted of stealing DVDs containing the names of 1,400 customers of its subsidiary LGT Treuhand.

The bank identified the employee as a Liechtenstein citizen and said it believed until recently that the stolen information had been returned when the man was convicted in 2004 of serious fraud, harassment and sequestering documents and sentenced to a suspended one-year prison term. LGT said it did not know the man's current location.

The German government has acknowledged that its Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, paid an informant as much as euro5 million (S$10.2 million) for a list with the names of account holders of a Liechtenstein bank. The information led to a series of high-profile raids against individuals and businesses across Germany.

'LGT considers such methods to be deeply offensive,' the bank said.

LGT said about 600 of the customers on the list, which dates from 2002, lived in Germany. It did not identify the origin of the other 800 customers whose details were leaked, and rejected the accusation that all of the people on the list were guilty of tax evasion.

German authorities complain that Liechtenstein's practice of allowing foreigners to open trusts anonymously by registering them through a local attorney or trustee encourages tax evasion. -- AP