Swiss Banker Blows Whistle on Tax Evasion - NYTimes.com.
Ruedi Elmer continues his brave and lonely work. As he says:
Offshore tax evasion is the biggest theft among societies and neighbor states in this world.
I’m glad to see he is Jack Blum working for him as his lawyer. There’s no better man to have.
I’m also delighted that Jack is a leader of Tax Justice Network USA.
Swiss private banks want clearer legislation over bank secrecy. - swissinfo.
Switzerland has got itself off the so called OECD grey list of tax haven states by committing to more than 12 new or revised Tax Information Exchange Agreements and Double Tax Agreements including the latest for of the OECD standard information exchange clause which gets round bank secrecy.
And now the backlash has begun amongst Swiss private bankers. it’s reported that:
The Swiss Private Bankers Association (SPBA) on Thursday asked the government to look more carefully at the details of renegotiated double taxation agreements. Parliament was also urged to draw up a legal framework to allow concessions without breaking banking secrecy laws.
Speaking at the SPBA annual media presentation in Bern on Thursday, Anne-Marie de Weck, president of the Geneva Private Bankers Association, said it was time to defuse the legal minefield before more controversies erupted.
“We strongly believe parliament should adopt a strong legal framework to clarify the application of these [measures to align Switzerland with international tax demands] and clear up the uncertainty,” she told swissinfo.ch.
Such measures include the renegotiation of 12 double taxation treaties in the last 10 months with another 18 in the pipeline. The SPBA welcomed the decision to amend the treaties but questioned why a clause on exchanging tax information, demanded by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), had been included in agreements with some non-member countries.
It’s been included for good reason: the world knows banking secrecy facilitates crime. That is not by chance. That is its purpose.
The Swiss can say what they like, but if they renege on these deals they should expect substantial economic sanctions to be imposed on them as a nation state. And the only reason for their suffering will be to assist criminals from elsewhere.
They may decide to do that. But they would be very unwise to do so. The world has had enough of such crime and will no longer tolerate it even if Swiss bankers will.
Remember it is only a year or so ago that Swiss bankers admitted that maybe half of all cash in Swiss banks was illicit. They really do not have a leg to stand on.
UBS Tax Crimes Scorecard: Bankers, Clients and Their Enablers - BusinessWeek.
This article is a summary of the cases against the bank, former UBS clients, and their enablers.
Mazing it’s come to the point where this is possible.
FT.com / Europe - France stands by use of stolen bank data.
France said on Sunday that it had committed no crime in using a stolen list of Swiss bank accounts to track French tax evaders as a row between Bern and Paris over banking secrecy intensified.
“France is committing no fraud, the tax evaders are,” said Eric Woerth, budget minister, in an interview on Canal Plus. “What counts is that we obtained [the information] legally.”
Quite so.
It’s extraordinary that tax evaders - common criminals guilty of theft - claim that the rule of law provides cover for their crime.
France has committed no crime.
And has an unpaid whistleblower who reports crime done more than breach contract? Unlike those he is reporting upon - both bank and tax evader - both of whom may have acted criminally?
The claim by Switzerland is a complete red herring. Of course France may use information obtained in this way.
UPDATE 1-Swiss seek French tax deal freeze over HSBC breach | Reuters .
Switzerland wants to freeze a treaty aimed at helping France catch tax cheats after Paris obtained used stolen client data, some of which was taken from HSBC's offshore banking headquarters in Geneva."I am requesting the responsible commission of parliament's upper house, which is going to be dealing with this tax treaty at the beginning of February, to cease negotiations on the double tax treaty until we have clarity about what happened," Swiss Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz said.
But not a hint that HSBC is being investigated for handling funds the French think tax evaded.
Which shows exactly where Swiss sentiment remains: on the side of the criminal.
The private banking arm of British bank HSBC in Geneva has filed a criminal complaint against a former employee who allegedly stole client data in 2006 and 2007.
The information is said to have been passed on by the information technology employee to French authorities.
Oh dear. What will the Reverend Stephen Green, head of HSBC and their Swiss private banking division be saying in his prayers tonight?
Could it be a request for a thunderbolt?
Or a mighty big one in hope that his sins might be forgiven?
Europe unites to deplore Swiss ban on minarets - Times Online .
The Swiss and European establishment united today in deploring yesterday’s decision by Swiss voters to outlaw the construction of minarets but conservative leaders warned that the referendum showed genuine fear over Islam on the continent.
Swiss officials, media and business leaders voiced shame over a vote that they say will stigmatise the country’s 400,000 Muslims and stain Switzerland’s name in the Muslim world. In contrast, hard right leaders in France, Austria, Italy and the Netherlands hailed what they depicted as a triumph for the people against the elite.
The hard right and a secrecy jurisdiction acting in concert: no surprise there.
Secrecy jurisdictions are captured states that are used to promote the hard right.
There will be howls of protest - but let’s be clear. Apart from this very obvious abuse of the human rights of Moslems who should be allowed to worship as they please, secrecy jurisdictions do something much more sinister: they deliberately ensure that what little wealth the poorest of the world might be entitled to in the world’s developing countries is systematically transferred to the world’s wealthiest countries for the benefit of the wealthiest in those wealthiest countries.
This is an abuse as bad as slavery.
And the right say that this is about liberty. No it isn’t: it is only about abuse. There is no other explanation.
The Tax Justice Network has blogged the continuing abuse of information exchange by Switzerland.
Carl Levin has said:
While it is good to know that 14,700 people have now disclosed previously hidden offshore bank accounts, the U.S.–Swiss Annex disclosed today, designed to compel disclosure of the names of U.S persons with Swiss accounts at UBS, is very disappointing. It complicates and muddies what should have been a straightforward agreement by UBS and the Swiss Government to disclose Swiss accounts hidden from the United States by U.S. accountholders.
UBS admitted last year that it ‘participated in a scheme to defraud the United States’ out of tax revenue. Since then, UBS has been prohibited by its government from simply turning over the names of the 52,000 U.S. clients suspected of participating in that tax evasion scheme with UBS. Instead, the tortured wording and the many limitations in this Annex shows the Swiss Government trying to preserve as much bank secrecy as it can for the future, while pushing to conceal the names of tens of thousands of suspected U.S. tax cheats. It is disappointing that the U.S. government went along.
He’s right.
So we still have still to these places.
And we will.
UBS registered mail warns U.S. clients on tax: report | Reuters .
I couldn’t help but laugh at this:
Swiss bank UBS AG warned U.S. customers by registered mail their account details may be given to U.S. tax authorities, a method that could itself breach secrecy laws, a Swiss paper said on Sunday.
The use of registered mail and envelopes showing the sender was UBS could enable the U.S. authorities to trace customers wanted for tax evasion well before their details are handed over under a U.S.-Swiss double taxation agreement, Sonntag weekly paper said.
Would the tax evaders put all go to the Post Office together now, please?
A protocol signed Wednesday by the United States and Switzerland amending the U.S.-Swiss Tax Treaty falls short of ensuring effective information-exchange between the U.S. and Swiss financial institutions, said Global Financial Integrity (GFI) Thursday.
“The protocol signed Wednesday is an improvement on the existing US-Swiss Income Tax Treaty,” said GFI director Raymond Baker. “It establishes a stronger framework for and commitment to cooperation in mutual tax assistance matters, but there is still a ways to go before we have something in place that will enable the U.S. to effectively pursue tax evaders that hide assets in Switzerland.”
The amendment contains new language which stipulates that Switzerland may no longer rely on national laws to refuse a request for information. Thus, under the new protocol Switzerland may not reference its own bank secrecy laws to deny a request for information. GFI applauds this laudable win for U.S. negotiators and recommends that this new language be a standard part of all future treaty negotiations with other countries. GFI also recommends this provision be included within the current OECD model, on which the majority of international Tax Information Exchange Agreements are modeled.
But, GFI notes, the new agreement maintains the paradigm of information-on-request, as opposed to adopting an automatic exchange framework. Also, requests for information under the new agreement are required to be highly specific which can be an impediment in investigating tax evasion and fraud cases.
“Automatic exchange of information is the only practical way to ensure that countries are provided all relevant information with respect to their own citizen taxpayers who have accounts abroad,” said Mr. Baker. “Under the protocol signed yesterday, a request for information basically must include the name, rank, and serial number of suspected tax evaders, when in fact the end-game of many tax investigations is to discover the identity of tax evaders.”
The amended tax treaty will now go to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for consideration, after which the Senate must approve it by a 2/3 vote before it may enter into force.
“The U.S.-Swiss agreement is a step forward,” said Mr. Baker. “But the protocol that will go to Congress for consideration falls far short of what is needed to improve U.S. access to information with respect to citizens with accounts in Switzerland.”
