Financial Transparency Coalition

Yesterday Switzerland’s parliament approved a much-anticipated tax information exchange agreement with Germany. The country has made similar agreements with Britain and Austria and is already in talks with Italy to make a similar deal. Under the agreement, Swiss banks will make anonymous advance payments to German tax authorities for undeclared money. Germany stands to make big gains: lawmakers already plan to levy a retroactive tax of 21 to 41 percent on their citizens with undeclared accounts. With holdings of an estimated 222 billion euros ($291.8 billion) in Swiss accounts, about 60 percent of which are undeclared, German citizens can expect...

Switzerland's new clean money strategy is little more than smoke and mirrors.

About three years ago, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) caught wind that Swiss bankers from Swiss banking giant, UBS, were traveling to the United States and systematically offering wealthy Americans the opportunity to evade taxes. They also learned UBS formed offshore non-U.S. companies for investors’ assets and then engaged in an aggressive cover-up to conceal these activities. After an intense investigation by the IRS, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) pursued both criminal and civil charges against the giant Swiss bank. Federal prosecutors dropped criminal charges eighteen months later, however, after the bank admitted to fraud and conspiracy,...

January 3rds’ indictment of three Swiss bankers by a US court on tax evasion charges, shows that robust action against offshore centres can succeed. This underlines the terrible deal the populations of Germany, Britain and Greece will be getting if their governments conclude one sided tax deals, known as Rubik, with the Swiss Government.