Banking Secrecy Is Here to Stay: Buy Swiss Banks

Washington (AFP) - The US Treasury has opened a new front in its war against offshore tax evasion. But for some it amounts to financial imperialism.

REUTERS/Arnd WiegmannGENEVA (Reuters) - Switzerland's politicians have done too little to protect the country's banks from demands for data from foreign governments, UBS Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said in an interview published by the SonntagsZeitung newspaper on Sunday.

A law effectively putting an end to Swiss banking secrecy has come into force. This report shows how bank data will be exchanged between countries. (SRF/swissinfo.ch) From the beginning of January, a new international law that introduced the automatic exchange of bank data means foreign citizens with accounts in Switzerland can expect previously secret information to be shared with their home tax authorities, and vice versa.

Another tax evasion scandal has risen to the surface as HSBC's CEO is being called out for harboring millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account. Based on reports, Stuart Gulliver, the CEO of Europe’s biggest bank was shielding his finances through a Panamanian company via his Swiss bank account. The act has plunged HSBC’s Swiss arm under a stream of potential criminal charges from Britain, on accounts of sheltering tax evasion practices.

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.

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.