The latest Swiss clean up is just another ruse to maintain banking secrecy to let Swiss banks support crime

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The Swiss announced measures to maintain banking secrecy, clean up their tax haven yesterday. One of the amusing ones was a suggestion that Swiss banks must:

upgrad[e] due diligence rules to prevent banks accepting untaxed assets. Besides these additional duties for banks, their clients would also be required to make a declaration on the fulfilment of their tax obligations in their home countries.

As Mark Morris, who is based in Switzerland and is an expert on these issues notes:

the majority of bank accounts in Switzerland are held by fiduciary structures where no immediate beneficiary is identifiable, e.g. discretionary trusts, foundations or establishments. So who then is responsible for signing the self-declaration of these fiduciary structures that the assets are declared back home? The EU Savings tax amendments realises this and therefore deems the settlor or founder as the beneficial owner. So would the Swiss self-declaration procedure be done by these deemed parties as well?

Highly unlikely as Rubik does not deem the settlor or founder as the beneficial owner. In fact this is a loophole of Rubik, and would be a loophole of the self-declaration policy.

In any event, what is the credibility of self-declaration and who is this policy meant to appease?

So this is another Swiss ruse of no value whatsoever. As we are now used to see, all the Swiss come up with is scheme after scheme designed to preserve bank secrecy and so tax evasion, the hiding of the proceeds of crime and the abuse of the world's tax systems, and especially those of developing countries. Indeed as Mark, in his role as a cartoonist (and a very good one at that) says:


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