Clients of UBS have won a court ruling in Switzerland granting them access to documents in their lawsuit against the Swiss financial regulator over the disclosure of their account details to US tax authorities, media reports said.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority must hand over redacted copies on its findings and court filings to three UBS account holders, Judge Francesco Brentani in Bern, was quoted as saying according to a ruling published today.

The judge is examining complaints by customers identified only as W, H and K that the regulator shouldn’t have ordered account details to be sent to the US Internal Revenue Service in February, according to a report by Bloomberg.

A spokesperson for Finma declined to comment on the specifics of the case when questioned by WealthBriefing on the matter.

Finma ordered UBS to send information on some US account holders as part of the bank’s February settlement of a criminal case with the US Justice Department. Details on about 250 clients were sent, according to people familiar with the matter. The case is separate from the civil case, settled last month, in which UBS is to give over around 4,450 client account details to US authorities as part of a deal thrashed out between the Swiss and US governments.

The bank’s legal wrangles with US tax authorities have added to its problems of sustaining massive losses from the credit crunch. Earlier this week, the bank’s management said in an internal memo that it had put some of its worst problems behind but there remained much work to do to turn fortunes around.

The Swiss court rejected Finma’s request to prevent the UBS customers or their lawyers from publishing the documents, saying blocking distribution of the documents would be an exceptional step and that Finma hadn’t given detailed reasons why this should be done.