A Swiss magistrate has recommended that three members of a family in Switzerland be tried for violating their country’s laws regarding the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Magistrate Andreas Muller told The New York Times that a six-year investigation by Swiss authorities showed Friedrich Tinner and his sons, Marco and Urs, were working with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. The Tinner family had also, according to American officials, worked secretly with the C.I.A. on nuclear issues since 2000. If the Tinners are found guilty, they face up to ten years in prison. But what does their relationship reveal about a black market of nuclear proliferation at work in a country so friendly to the U.S.? 

For decades, unpublished papers by the Jewish Czech writer, Franz Kafka, have been hidden away in safety deposit boxes in Zurich, Switzerland and Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel’s supreme court recently ordered that the boxes, which contain thousands of handwritten documents by one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century, be opened. However, there is still an ongoing legal dispute about who owns the collection of private papers. It is not yet known whether the public will ever get to see them.

The Swiss bank UBS has struck a deal with the U.S. government. Washington has been fighting for the release of some 52,000 names of wealthy Americans suspected of evading taxes by hiding billions of dollars in secret bank accounts with UBS and other Swiss banks. To help us understand the details of the deal and the impact on clients of the bank, The Takeaway turns to Bill Sharp, a lawyer who represents a number of clients with Swiss bank accounts.