Financial Transparency Coalition

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?

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria's main political parties agreed on Wednesday to pass measures which should ease banking secrecy and help bring the Alpine republic up to OECD standards on financial transparency.

William Wallace: Your editorial welcoming action to force tax havens to loosen the bonds of secrecy (21 August) omitted one important point: many of the world's leading tax havens fall under the British crown. Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos are all significant offshore financial centres. All benefit from the British system of law, from the expectation of offshore investors that British oversight guarantees higher standards than competitor centres – and all have benefited from Whitehall's relaxed oversight regime.

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...