A partner with Baker & McKenzie Switzerland, who are, I believe, the biggest firm of lawyers in the world has sought to attack Germany's attempt to break banking secrecy, according to Dow Jones online financial news who say:
Philip Marcovici, a partner in the Zurich office of law firm Baker & McKenzie, said: "This is not an issue involving just Germany and the other offshore centres in Europe. It is a global trend towards greater transparency in the tax affairs of the rich.
"This involves offshore centres across the world such as Singapore, Hong Kong and even Latin American money residing in offshore accounts in the US."
Marcovici said all parties involved in the dispute should come together to negotiate the issues. "Germany needs to realise that part of the culture of secrecy in offshore centres like Switzerland is to do with historical factors like the second world war that it was responsible for.
"Equally, the banks need to realise that the days of banking secrecy are numbered as globalisation increases the need for transparency."
Marcovici should get his facts right. The banking secrecy laws in Switzerland pre-date the Nazis and have nothing to do with their influence. That's just seeking to find excuses for delaying what he recognises is inevitable. He should instead be seeking to reduce the number of days that we have to banking secrecy. That way he might win some credibility. Speaking as he did he wins none.
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Marcovici is not off the mark when he associates the rise of banking secrecy with the advent of Nazism. Historians seem to generally agree that the formal codification of Swiss banking law (1934/35), which criminalised breaches of banking secrecy, was a political response to the dark days of the 30s generally and Hitler’s accession to Chancellor specifically.
That said, critics often make the point that Swiss banks did very well out of the war. Nevertheless, the Third Reich was bribing Swiss bank employees as early as 1932 to find out about German bank accounts, and then confiscating them.
A belated happy birthday, by the way.
Rob
My ongoing research suggests that the 1934 banking law was not in any way Nazi linked.
This is an OK summary of the jurisprudential development http://switzerland.isyours.com/e/banking/secrecy/before1934.html – all of which is pre the Nazi rise to power
Richard
The point being missed here is no-one should be blaming the current culture of tax secrecy on events from decades ago. Switzerland chooses to maintain its banking secrecy, years after the Nazi threat dissipated. The blame for its current culture of secrecy lays squarely on Switzerland’s shoulders.
Richard,
From the very same source you cite in your comment:
In 1934, the Swiss Federal Parliament explicitly introduced the notion of bank secrecy for the first time in a section of the law and created criminal sanctions. Why was this law created? The first and most common explanation is the one taken up by the Swiss Bankers Association, which considers the event to be a political act by the Federal Parliament to demonstrate its independence and its neutrality in the face of the threatening power of Nazi Germany.
…
When three Germans were put to death in 1934 for having an account in Switzerland, the Swiss authorities were convinced of the necessity for a strict law on bank secrecy to protect Swiss bank clients by the criminal code. With the threat of imprisonment for any banker who violated bank secrecy, the Swiss government imposed a blocking mechanism against its fascist neighbors’ laws of extraterritorial pretense. This protected the clients and the Swiss bankers, since no authority could henceforth constrain them by law to commit a crime.
http://switzerland.isyours.com/e/banking/secrecy/nazi.spies.html
Per your own source your own ongoing research is in need of a re-look?
Georges
Absolutely not! My research is quite right: the jurisprudence behind this law, the cases that created the secrecy and the culture that promoted that secrecy all pre-dated 1934.
I will go further: I think the Swiss used the situation in 1934 as an excuse to formalise an abuse that had been ongoing for sometime, and which they knew was under severe attack from authorities in France and elsewhere that had nothing to do with fascism and everything to do with tax evasion.
It’s now terribly convenient to use this excuse, but the reality is as Mark puts it, that the Nazis have been gone a long time and Switzerland has no excuse for what it sanctioned in 1934 some 74 years after it was created and 63 years after the fall of Nazi Germany. The only reason that is left for these laws is the promotion of tax evasion – something Switzerland blatantly and criminally does.
The Right have to find better excuse than Nazi abuse for promoting continuing abuse.
Richard
Richard,
The Swiss (and your own source) seem to disagree.
To the actual point of banking secrecy in any country which chooses to have large levels of secrecy, three cheers.
Whatever the individual can do to keep and preserve the majority of their income and wealth from the prying hands of the State, all the better. The income and wealth of the individual is the property of and owned by the individual, the State can wait in line (prefer near the end of the line) for their skim.
Pre-emptively speaking, the answer is “no” in regards to individuals practicing violence (real violence, not some ill-defined soft-headed concept of “social” violence) against other individuals through terrorism enjoying the benefits and amenities of bank secrecy laws.
Impertinent question, should these rightful laws be referred to as “bank secrecy laws” anyway? How about “individual financial preservation laws” instead?
Georges comment has been allowed simply to show just how anti-social some who seek to use the Nazi excuse for tax haven secrecy are.
Richard,
I am not saying anything about any Nazi excuse. Nice try.
What I am saying is that your declarative statement:
“My ongoing research suggests that the 1934 banking law was not in any way Nazi linked.”
Is not true based on the very source you submit as ‘proof’ to your own statement.
My excuse for the positives of tax haven secrecy are based upon the individual taking their own actions to ensure the least amount of their own wealth/income are confiscated by the State.
If “allowing” individuals to keep/protect what is rightfully their own in th efirst place equals anti-social behaviour, sign me up.
Stone me, is there no area of law that you are NOT an expert on? Now you are an expert on the Second World War and Swiss banking secrecy. Give me a break. Marcovici is a well respected commentator, more than you will ever be. He knows what he is talking about, where is this “attack” you bitterly accuse him of? He is just setting it in context. Are you a Scouser? Calm down, calm down Richard!
Phil and Georges
If you think my research was just a link to one article then I’m afraid you do rather underestimate the time input I’ve made into reaching this conclusion.
The opinion has been formed as part of work I’m doing in the course of writing a book on tax havens I’m co-authoring for Cornell University Press.
Richard
Georges,
Surely the problem is that the lack of transparency in tax havens is allowing individuals to keep/protect what -isn’t- their own. People do not have a right to hang on to funds when the democratically elected governments of their countries have decided, in a proper and accountable manner, that those funds should be taxed. After all, if co-operating with tax law is optional what’s to stop someone burgling your house next week? Nobody necessarily likes paying taxes, but without them no democratic society could function (because for starters there’d be no police to stop peopke from burgling your house), and evading them is theft from the public purse. Last time I checked, most people believed that theft was anti-social, and so’s anything that allows it to flourish.
Gareth,
Quite right and that goes to the heart of the matter. It is these high levels of taxation (confiscatory in my opinion) in Europe and elsewhere which drive this issue. Address the level of taxation so that an individual feels legitimately comfortable handing over to the State a portion of their own (the individual) earnings and you can go a long way in curbing so-called tax avoidance/evasion.
One quibble though, many people see what the State does to them as theft when it comes to taxation, thusly I suppose the State can be accused of anti-social behaviour too.
Richard,
You posted to a link to bolster your case about individual financial preservation laws in Switzerland. Your own link refutes your own declarative assertion. Why not admit you are wrong and move on…
Georges
As far as I can see you have a few alternatives – you are entirely free to:
1. go and live in a tax haven (if you have a job there or the income/capital entry fee)
2. find a rock to live on in the deep ocean that is not the sovereign territory of another country and therefore without the burden of any taxation or any roads, schools, hospitals, army, police, infrastructure and utilities, TV and radio, shops etc. You may find a few other creatures lurking there which share your philosophy, although some of them are likely to try to eat you.
3. find or found a party to govern that will give you what you want
Otherwise pay the tax that is lawfully required of you by the society in which you live, or join the criminal classes that include murderers, rapists, burglars, fraudsters, muggers, drug smugglers, people traffickers, tax evaders and benefit cheats to name but a few.
As you seem to me to be a sociopath, my recommendation to you would be to go back to your domicile of origin – under whichever rock it is you crawled out from.