Swiss lawmakers miss opportunity to perpetuate banking secrecy

Do legislators in Switzerland have more sense than Swiss negotiators who reached a deal with the United States in 2009 to reveal the names of nearly 4,500 U.S. clients of Swiss banking giant UBS thought to be hiding assets overseas? It's hard to understand why the National Council voted to reject the deal, which had been demanded by the U.S. government despite Switzerland's long tradition of banking secrecy. The U.S. Department of Justice had already fined Switzerland nearly $800 million for keeping secret the names of thousands of UBS depositors suspected of evading billions of dollars in taxes, and the upper house, the Council of State, approved the deal earlier this week. Apparently, the lower house was bowing to pressure from Swiss banking interests, who wanted to hang onto the illogical secrecy tradition, when it voted to kill the agreement. The bankers certainly understand that the 4,500 names would only be the beginning of the eventual dismantling of the entire secrecy system, an anachronism in the global economy. But the deal seemed an overly generous compromise that would have endorsed the continuation of the strange system. After all, why should any depositors' names be secret? There may be legitimate reasons to conceal assets, but they're hard to think of offhand. And avoiding taxes should certainly not be one of those reasons. Swiss bankers have hidden behind the secrecy system long enough -- the world wants to know what happened to the billions of dollars and precious artwork deposited by Nazi officials when they looted the vaults and museums of Europe during World War II.

Amnesty offer on overseas bank accounts attracts nearly 15,000 takers

U.S. tax authorities say publicity about a settlement with a giant European bank has at least helped inspire nearly 15,000 U.S. owners of overseas bank accounts that have been off the books for years to come forward and pay taxes on their holdings. Tuesday's announcement by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, reported by the New York Times, attributes the response to the Oct. 15 end of an amnesty program under which U.S. taxpayers who declared their holdings were eligible for reduced penalties and avoid tax evasion charges. The catalyst was the future release of the identifies of more than 4,000 U.S. residents with offshore accounts with UBS, a Swiss megabank that offered anonymity to depositors. But UBS agreed in February to reveal names of 4,500 depositors with accounts totalling more than $18 billion as part of a settlement of a U.S. government lawsuit charging the bank with selling offshore financial products intended to enable tax evasion, the Times said. Under the terms of the deal, UBS also must admit criminal wrongdoing and pay $780 million in fines. and admit to criminal wrongdoing. “We are talking about billions of dollars coming into the U.S. Treasury,” said IRS chief Douglas Shulman, the Times said. head of the Mr. Shulman said. “We have now gained access to thousands of taxpayers and bank accounts that we have never had before.” More than half of the depositors revealed their holdings in the month before the deadline. "We had a flood at the end," Shulman said. Many of the accounts belonged to UBS customers but many did not, the Times said. The IRS said it was expanding its investigation of offshore tax havens around the world. But not a word was said about holding the Swiss banking industry to account for the billions of dollars stolen from Europeans during World War II by the Nazi government of Germany and deposited in Switzerland, where it presumably remains.

U.S. prosecutions expected in wake of UBS deal

At least the recent deal between the U.S. Justice Department and the giant Swiss bank UBS will result in more money for the deficit-ridden U.S. Treasury. U.S. prosecutors have opened 150 investigations against 150 U.S. citizens they believe were helped by Swiss bankers to avoid taxes on $20 billion in assets held in Europe, Central America and the Caribbean. Under the terms of the deal, a major dent in previously inviolate Swiss banking secrecy laws, 5,000 additional owners of hidden assets are expected to be revealed, according to the Reuters international news service. But Swiss bankers are believed to be still be hiding the identities of 10,000-15,000 more depositors from the United States with possibly hundreds of billions more in assets. Those names are not expected to be revealed in the current case, in which UBS also agreed to pay $780 million in fines. This apparently means that the United States has backed away from permanently neutering Switzerland's banking secrecy tradition, which has no place in the evolving global economy. It also looks like the United States has failed use the case to right one of the great festering wrongs from World War II, and force Swiss bankers to reveal the locations and amounts of money and assets stolen from victims of the Nazi conquest of Europe. Why Swiss banks should continue to be exempt from common human decency defies explanation. And, yet, even the world's most powerful nations seem to quiver at the prospect of correcting this indecency. In fact, if not for the testimony of one former UBS banker turned whistleblower, there may have been no case. That banker, Bradley Birkenfeld of South Boston, formerly of Geneva, pleaded guilty in 2008 to helping a South Florida billionaire hide $200 million in assets from U.S. tax authorities. Birkenfeld agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a lighter prison sentence.