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.
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Eh, no tax evader has said anything on this subject yet, as far as I know, so it’s difficult to say that they are claiming anything.
There is unease in France about this list, even within the party of Woerth (his predecessor has gone on record to say that he wouldn’t use such a list), and of course the Swiss are up in arms.
The whistleblower may very well have committed a crime in Switzerland. You may not like the law that he has broken, but the fact remains.
And how has the bank acted criminally? They have broken no law in Switzerland, nor in France. They may act unmorally, but that’s a different discussion.
Facilitating money laundering is a crime
Don’t ya love that HSBC Geneva now clamoring to protect their blown integrity… stating only seven names were in that list. 😆
Sure, sure. If I was a tax evader I wouldn’t be sanguine at all.
If the whistle blower has committed a crime in Switzerland, it’s the Swiss’s problem. They have shown no willingness over the years to assist the rest of Europe to deal with the tax evasion they have facilitated. The swiss can deal with this by themselves. I suggest the mole should not take a skiing holiday there this year though!
I always assumed evidence that was obtained illegally was inadmissible in court. The supposed tax evaders could just disregard the ‘evidence’ as fictional or inaccurate, particularly as it couldn’t be verified by the Swiss bank.
So then what…. one word against another?
That may depend on whose law has been broken
And whether the broken law was itself legitimate
Is bank secrecy to facilitate tax evasion legitimate in the state that suffers the consequence?
All this moral support against using stolen data makes me just cry 🙁
Yeah sure, that’s why Germany provided Liechtenstein with a rod regarding stolen data. Tax evaders deserve no sympathy, whatsoever.
I suspect the issues here about legality concern the fairly strict French privacy laws. My understanding, for example, is that the French tax authorities would not be able to make the sort of demands HMRC have recently done, because of French privacy laws that prevent fishing expeditions. So there may be an argument that buying (or accepting) a list of French tax evaders is illegal for the same reason that the authorities could not ask banks to provide such a list (though they could ask for the details of a specific, named person).
I’m not making any value judgment on this, just trying to help people understand where the legality question may come in.
Practically speaking, if governments were to offer (substantial) rewards for whistleblowers that might accelerate things more quickly, simply and cheaply than anything else. Say any bank worker blowing the whistle gets 20% of the tax being evaded. That would make things interesting!
If anything the French authorities are more in the wrong here. They have deliberately disregarded Swiss confidentiality laws, the individual bank’s own confidentiality policies and the French privacy laws that are designed to protect their own citizens.
To make matters worse, they actually paid somebody to break these laws. This is far more immoral than the alleged tax evasion.
They should have followed the example of the IRS and done it all legally.
Jim, I remain to be convinced that it is more immoral. According to what set of moral principles?
James from Durham….They are either inducing or commending illegal activity. I hear they deny having paid for any info….but I suspect the whistleblower will still expect a reward.
Payments to previous whistleblowers (like in the HMRC case) will no doubt have incentivised the whistleblower to break the law. So its not just the French who are to blame.
My sources tell me the whistle blower did this out of principle…not for payment
That is why French law has not been violated
Hard to know what to believe of what this “whistleblower” says. In his most recent interview he has said that he hasn’t volunteered any information to the French, only that the French, acting upon a request for judicial assistance from the Swiss, seized his computer and disks, and thereby stumbled upon lists of account holders.
And I’ll pass on his kidnap story….
Jim, I don’t think you quite got my point. If what the whistleblower did was immoral, why is it more immoral than tax evasion?
Tax evasion is a single crime…. and it is only alleged.
In combination, the tax authorities and whistleblowers blatantly break multiple laws to obtain confidential information….. all based on a hunch. Furthermore, the support of this activity just encourages budding whistleblowers to break multiple laws in the future.
But Jim, I am quite keen to encourage those budding whistle-blowers. it seems to me that, if it were not for the whistle-blowers, all sorts of dirty linen would be kept hidden away to the detriment of the public. Health & safety infractions, fraud etc etc. Invariable whistleblowers break confidentiallity agreements and laws. It’s a price worth paying.
As for your relative morality, it’s all numbers is it? Just count the number of offences and there’s your answer.
Tax evasion is quite a serious crime in fact, resulting in many people having to pay extra tax to cover the shortfall from the fraudsters. I can’t see why you want to protect them?
I don’t think tax evaders should be protected, I just think its wrong to encourage the whistleblower route.
Like I said before, they should just follow the example of the IRS (with UBS) and take the bank to court. What’s wrong with that?