After a federal arrest warrant, a set of fines, and death threats were issued to him, Meili fled Switzerland to the United States by right of asylum in late 1997, returning to his home country in 2009.
He discovered that officials at UBS were destroying documents about orphaned assets, believed to be credit balances of deceased Jewish clients whose heirs' whereabouts were unknown, as well as books from the German Reichsbank.
The Zürich authorities opened a judicial investigation against Meili[8] for suspected violations of the Swiss laws on banking secrecy,[9] which is a prosecutable offense ex officio in Switzerland.
[14][15] Fagan was disbarred in New York[16] and New Jersey for failing to pay court fines and fees, and for stealing client money and escrow trust funds from Holocaust survivors.
[25][26] In his book Imperfect Justice, activist Stuart Eizenstat claimed the "Meili Affair" was important in the decision of Swiss banks to participate in the process of reparations for victims of Nazi looting during World War II.
He wrote that the affair "did more than anything to turn the Swiss banks into international pariahs by linking their dubious behavior during and after the War to the discovery of a seemingly unapologetic attempt to cover it up now by destroying documents.
[29] Daniel von Aarburg filmed the events, and the documentary Affäre Meili - Ein Whistleblower zwischen Moral und Milliarden premiered in mid-August 2018.