Financial Transparency Coalition

Michelle Caruso-Cabrera is a CNBC anchor and a tax haven apologist. During her program yesterday she claimed that the agreement between the Justice Department and Swiss bank UBS, in which the identities of 4,450 American scofflaws holding UBS accounts will be provided to the IRS, “is a terrible thing.” “Follow me here,” she pleads. Okay Michelle, convince me that pursuing cases in which Americans violated U.S. law is a bad thing.

Sunlight Foundation--When President Barack Obama promised in May to raise an additional $210 billion in taxes a year by closing corporate loopholes and cracking down on individual tax cheats, he pointed to an address in the Cayman Islands listed by 12,000 corporations as the kind of abuse his proposals would shut down. "Either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world," the President said.

There is an ongoing saga of good versus evil. Valiant governments, with proud leaders at their helms, are devoted to bringing down the wicked tax havens and the conniving men and women who hide money on their shores. One day, we will tell the tale of how these governments reigned victorious, dismantling the shadow financial system, and restored the money to the rightful people of their nations. If only. Banking secrecy is no fairy tale. In the system of international tax evasion, the valiant heroes are just as guilty as the wicked witches. In a report to...

I have been chased by journalists (all from outside the UK) today asking what the UK decision to force offshore banks to disclose details of account holders to HM Revenue & Customs might mean. The Swiss are particularly keen. The honest answer is, of course, that we do not yet know. The most likely answer is that it depends on two things – first whether the banks appeal and succeed in doing so and second how far the UK is willing to go to enforce this.