Banking Secrecy Is Here to Stay: Buy Swiss Banks

Secret Swiss bank accounts are infamous in the public eye, largely thanks to James Bond movies, and for getting a number of the world’s biggest lenders into hot water.

Secret Swiss bank accounts are infamous in the public eye, largely thanks to James Bond movies, and for getting a number of the world’s biggest lenders into hot water.

Swiss banks, for decades the bastions of secrecy, are preaching the virtue of transparency to their U.S. clients as they try to head off billions of dollars in potential fines for helping Americans evade taxes.

By Katharina Bart

Berlin (AFP) - The finance ministers of around 50 countries meet in Berlin on Wednesday to sign a deal they hope will put an end to banking secrecy and aid the worldwide fight against tax fraud and evasion.

Switzerland has denied preparing a list of tax dodgers for the Indian authorities amid mounting pressure on the alpine state. Even with a global standard on Automatic Information Exchange (AIE) in the works, repatriating money from offshore havens like Switzerland may not be easy. An investigatory body, recently set up by India’s new government to unearth black money, trumpeted the disputed cooperation to the Times of India: “This is a breakthrough development in the fight against black money.

The Cayman Islands, known as a haven for wealthy Americans seeking to stash cash overseas without scrutiny from the U.S. government, is about to become less secret. An agreement between the countries will put in place the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca. The 2010 law makes it tougher to hide money overseas because foreign banks must report their accounts to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service or face, in some cases, a 30% withholding tax.