Washington Post By Michael Birnbaum, Published: November 4
In ZURICH — For decades, Switzerland was the place where money went to hide. Cash sent to its mountain aeries was protected by some of the strictest secrecy laws in the world.
But with the euro crisis forcing Switzerland’s revenue-starved neighbors to search out new sources of money, the Alpine country’s bank vaults are suddenly looking irresistible. In recent months, the nation’s strict banking secrecy has been under assault from countries such as Germany and Britain as never before. Experts say the last veils may soon be dropped altogether, bringing the hush-hush tradition to an end.
*Gotta love the silly last-minute election propaganda. Economic figures give a much better picture of real situation:
Bitcoin will replace Switzerland as the place to secretly move funds around, it’s really sad that Switzerland gave in on their neutrality about money, people need a place to move their funds to, so their crazy leaders or populace don’t steal it all and it also keeps other countries reasonable in their taxing policies.
Here’s some partial good news for US Persons in Switzerland (and Swiss US Persons in the USA). Postfinance has told the GenevaLunch newspaper that it will continue to offer accounts to USPs after it converts from a Swiss Post business unit to an independent government-owned bank in 2013. Based on statements made some months ago by a Postfinance spokesman, it has generally been expected that the Postfinance would cease doing business with USPs in 2013. The article does not state what kind of accounts it will offer to USPs:
http://genevalunch.com/blog/2012/11/01/postfinance-to-simplify-business-private-accounts/
*Innocent, here is some more information it:
https://www.postfinance.ch/en/about/company/management/leadership/fatca.html
For those unfortunate US persons, their bank might give them a login here:
http://www.us-person.ch/Web/en/Additional_information_content/Default.htm
I see Jack has blogged on this article, and a couple interesting comments there.
http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.com/2012/11/article-on-erosion-of-swiss-secrecy.html
Saturday’s Tages-Anzeiger carried an article about a small asset managment bank called “Bank Frey” that has some revealing details about how “group information requests” will work in Switzerland. (The Swiss parliament agreed to add “group information requests” in 2012 to the 2009 Swiss-American tax treaty (awaiting US Senate ratification)). To summarize, the Swiss banking regulators, FINMA, wish to avoid “group information requests” by not having any recalcitrant US customer account holders, according to this article. If banks are found to have recalcitrant US customers, FINMA may threaten the bank with loss of its bank license. Translated excerpts follow:
“Bank Frey was the last to make public until a year ago the fact that it would accept U.S. customers, as long as allowed by Swiss law. But now everything is different at this bank. “Bank Frey does not discriminate against U.S. customers. In view of the political situation, however, special and extensive due diligence is being applied for legal compliance,” says Frey spokeswoman Silvia Zumsteg. Furthermore, the bank stresses the implementation agreement for FATCA, the U.S. law that will force also the US taxpayer abroad towards tax honesty.
De facto automatic data exchange
According to this agreement, starting in 2013 each bank must report the number of undeclared US customer accounts. The American government can then make a «group information request» for any information concerning these accounts and their owners, which is tantamount to a de facto automatic data exchange. To which banks the
FATCA rules were to be applied was not clear until now. Originally the talk was of major banks, which would have excluded Bank Frey with its CHF 1.8 billion in assets under management.
But apparently, the FINMA (ed: Swiss bank regulators) is now all over this. “The risks from cross-border financial services have long been a core issue of our oversight,” said Finma spokesman Tobias Lux “We expect banks to minimize their legal and reputational risks in this area with appropriate measures. Dealing with untaxed U.S. assets, undoubtedly, represents such a risk.”
Threat of withdrawal of banking license
In plain English, this means: All Swiss banks must ensure that they have only clean American customers. Otherwise, Finma calls into question the bank’s competence, that is, a de facto threat of loss of the banking license. This is intended to prevent the American government from making «group information requests». Finma is being held co-responsible for the fact that the Swiss financial center, just two years after the settlement of the UBS affair, already came back to the attention of the American government.”
http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wirtschaft/unternehmen-und-konjunktur/Finma-schleift-die-letzte-SteuerTrutzburg/story/28040220