Swiss private bank Julius Baer says a Zurich-based employee has been arrested on suspicion of stealing confidential client information that was later passed to German tax investigators.

Bank spokesman Jan Vonder Muehll confirmed a report Sunday by Swiss weekly SonntagsZeitung about the case.

Authorities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia have been buying CDs containing information about Germans suspected of hiding money in Swiss bank accounts.

It was not clear if the arrested bank employee is suspected to have directly passed data to German authorities.

Last year, Julius Baer paid (EURO)50 million (then $72.5 million) to avoid prosecution as part of a deal with German tax authorities.

Julius Baer recently agreed to pay 860 million francs ($879 million) to buy Merrill Lynch's wealth management operations outside the United States.