Gold key

While Swiss law formerly granted nearly complete financial privacy, fully anonymous accounts are no longer available.

International pressure related to efforts to trace and identify terrorists and drug traffickers has eliminated the anonymous "Swiss bank account" that has appeared in numerous books and films and conspiracy theories.

A number of plot devices detail the method of authentication of the account-holder, adding to the mystery and drama of the client's arrival.

In the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, the heroine Sophie Neveu is given a gold key by her grandfather.

In Lewis Perdue's Daughter of God there is a gold key which is hidden in a painting ("The Home of the Lady of Our Redeemer").

Use of a gold ingot as a "gold key" has been used as a plot device. (Serial numbers obscured in altered photo.)