Financial Transparency Coalition

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Executives at Swiss banks Julius Baer (BAER.VX) and Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) expect to avoid a U.S. tax investigation into their private banking businesses on the same scale as their peer UBS (UBSN.VX), they told The Financial Times on Sunday.

Swiss Bankers Association has declined to give names of Indian holding accounts in Swiss banks. But they could not hold American's names, they buckled down, revealed names of US nationals and paid fines to US also. Why do we then fail?

The Wall Street Journal has run an Op Ed by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., a member of its editorial board. Published under the title “Does the World Still Need the Swiss? : UBS’s sin was marketing secrecy too broadly.” I am struggling to work out whether it is mad, bad or just plain stupid. The hypothesis is this: that in the World War 2, more by luck than judgement the bank secrecy that the Swiss created to assist tax evaders in France helped the Jews. Of course, it also helped the Nazis: the Swiss were entirely amoral on...

Last week as the UBS settlement was announced and (metaphorically speaking) copious amounts of bourbon were drunk in panic at many of the 4,450 homes where U.S. account holders rest their heads (for now), a producer for a well known news program called to ask if I would appear to discuss the issue. After noting that I would, he wondered if I knew of anyone who might take a view opposite of mine. I gave the producer two leads but was told later that neither panned out and, since they could not provide a balanced view of...