If what we are reading today is true, the end of Swiss bank secrecy – if it hasn’t been reached – is closing in fast.
The Swiss Federal Council has made a deal with the U.S. Justice department to hand over the data on 4,450 American clients of the Union Bank of Switzerland, after a long investigation showed that the bank helped them engage in tax evasion.
So how momentous is this from the Swiss point of view? According to this editorial by Pierre-Yves Frei of the Tribune De Geneve, while Switzerland averted the worst – handing over the data of all 52,000 of UBS’ American clients – the arrangement highlights the impending doom of Swiss bank secrecy.
Referring to this ‘victory’, Pierre-Yves Frei writes in part:
Since the 1970s there has been a long and inexorable process of erosion. How can we deny this? And how can we doubt that this tendency toward disintegration will continue when in this very year, a major bank was forced to hand over confidential information and when the Swiss government has abandoned the distinction between tax evasion and fraud.
[Editor’s Note: Tax evasion, where one merely ‘fails’ to report assets or income, is not a crime in Switzerland. When it comes to Americans at least, that is now apparently changed].
So is Switzerland victorious? Yes – if we consider that a gazelle liberated after being badly chomped within the jaws of a lion is victorious.
EDITORIAL by Pierre-Yves Frei
Translated By Philippe Guittard
August 20, 2009
Switzerland – Le Temps – Original Article (French)
Few agreements are a victory for both parties. The one between the United States and Switzerland concerning UBS [Union Bank of Switzerland] clearly belongs to this category.But even if the Federal Council [Switzerland’s collective head of state] is pleased to have drawn what is needed out of the talks – and this is doubtless the case – let’s keep in mind that in normal times, Switzerland would have rejected America’s request for administrative assistance, or would have treated such a request with circumspection coupled with the extremely slow minutia required by such matters.
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