Saturday, March 14, 2009

The end of Swiss bank secrecy...

Wealthy individuals and companies will no longer be able to hide their riches in Zurich bank accounts after Switzerland bowed to international pressure to end the era of “no questions asked” banking. 

It will join Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Andorra, which also agreed this week to share limited information on their accounts on request from foreign governments, ending 300 years of obstinate banking secrecy. The move is a fillip to Gordon Brown’s attempts to clamp down on tax havens at next month’s G20 meeting. On the more critical issue of stimulating the world economy, however, the rift between Britain and the US and the rest of Europe widened as the G20 finance ministers met in Horsham, West Sussex, to discuss how to react. More...

See also:

  1. UBS and Washington, a love-story gone sour...
  2. UBS refuses to reveal info about 52,000 US secret accounts...
  3. 7 myths about opening a Swiss bank account...
  4. UBS, under American pressure, is closing secret accounts...

2 comments:

  1. The USA cannot bow to the wishes of the EU and their high tax regimes. the reason why they want the Swiss banks out of the picture is so they can raise taxes. Soon, we will follow. Those rich people would gladly pay some taxes. But not when the taxes are spent by a bunch of liberal baffoons.
    The other banks in the world should emulate the Swiss, not try to destroy them. If all countries were "tax havens", the citizens would keep their money at home.
    All these high tax liberal socialist countries would rather destroy the Swiss banks than to COMPETE with them. What happened to the US competitive spirit. Our desire to be competitive has been the reason why we are so great. Let's COMPETE with the Swiss. Let's have an incentive for our US citizens to keep their money in the USA. Let's beat the Swiss at their own game.
    Senator Levin spent years trying to force the Swiss to give up the names of US citizens that have accounts at Swiss banks. If he would have spent all that time and our taxpayer money finding ways to COMPETE with them, we wouldn't be talking about it today .And besides that, let the USA once and for
    all quit meddling in the affairs of another country.
    If the Swiss have no privacy, look for a WORLD WIDE SURGE IN TAXES

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  2. Somehow, I suspect there's more to this than meets the eye. After all, banking secrecy concerns mainly the rich and the powerful, the world's elite, while for the rest of us it's not that crucial. And yet, it's precisely those in power who seem to want to dismantle a system that is to their advantage. Very strange...

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