Switzerland
has begun online publication of names of foreigners and foreign firms wanted in
tax probes by their countries of origin, including Germany. American citizens
are identified only by their initials.
Deutsche Welle, 25 May 2015
The Swiss
Sunday newspaper "Sonntagszeitung" said the alpine nation was flooded
with formal tracing requests from foreign tax authorities. In response, Switzerland
had resorted to listing names, birthdates and nationalities in its federal
gazette, where official texts are published.
The
official justification was that the publication gave those identified the
chance to hire a lawyer and seek legal recourse, said the
"Sonntagszeitung", referring to recent roll-backs of Swiss bank secrecy, especially under US pressure.
Formal
requests from abroad
The
newspaper quoted Swiss federal tax authority official Alexandre Dumas as saying
that banks had little interest in seeking customers who no longer kept their
accounts in Switzerland.
Instead,
foreign countries were sending formal judicial assistance requests, asking for
help to trace their missing taxpayers via Switzerland's federal tax administration in Berne.
In turn,
Switzerland was demanding that such countries, when sent Swiss documentation on
such suspects, keep their further details confidential.
Further
'taboo break'
It
amounted, however, to a further "taboo break" by Swiss authorities,
"Sonntagszeitung" said, while also quoting a Swiss lawyer, Andreas
Rüd, who said many suspects did not realize that they could seek Swiss legal
recourse.
The Swiss federal gazette's weekly editions in May contained several dozen decrees,
naming citizens of Spain, India, the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, the USA and
South Korea and companies registered in Panama, the Bahamas and Spain.
In the case
of India and Germany, Dumas denied that their formal requests stemmed from tax
authorities recent acquisitions of stolen data listing suspected tax evaders.
"We
are never certain, whether it [the request] involves stolen data. But, the
principle of trust applies," Dumas said.
Probes
prompt disclosures
Last year
in Germany, suspected tax evaders filed a record 40,000 self-disclosure notices
on funds they had secreted abroad, prompted by a new law that allows backdated
payment of overdue tax coupled with penalties.
In
February, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) made
public data files leaked to French authorities in the so-called SwissLeaks
case. The London-based HSBC bank was accused of helping suspects in some 200
countries.
HSBC apologized
and its Swiss branch said it had been "cooperately continuously" with
Swiss authorities since it became aware of the data theft in 2008.
That
followed agreements by Swiss giants UBS and Credit Suisse to pay fines in the US on allegations of helping Americans to evade taxes.
In March,
Switzerland signed an accord to automatically share tax information with
Australia. Similar accords are planned with the US and EU.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.