In the eyes of the Swiss, the reputation of the United States of America has for various reasons been in sharp decline, and America has been presenting itself to Switzerland less and less as an old friend, and more and more as an enemy. I want to remind our friends in Switzerland, as well as every American in Switzerland, that the US is a friend of Switzerland, and I want to tell you what the Swiss as friends must do.
The US and Switzerland are two of the worlds oldest democracies, and both share the founding principles of freedom and independence. At the time of the American revolution, Switzerland was surrounded by tyrannical monarchies, and its fierce independence and stubborn refusal to submit to these despots earned it the title of ‘Sister Republic’ to the United States of America.
How things can change. In 2010, the US Congress with FATCA decreed that every bank in the world must report to the IRS, or face severe consequences. This is nothing less than an act of war on the sovereignty of every nation. Switzerland must under no circumstances submit to these threats, and we must as friends tell America that they are out of line. Brute force has replaced enlightened thinking, and the language of threats and intimidation have become the norm of US foreign policy.
Swiss politicians talk of appeasing the Americans to preserve our friendship. Real friends however don’t allow themselves to be bullied or intimidated by their friends. America needs to be brought back to its senses, so that Switzerland and America can sort out their differences as equals. Switzerland must not allow itself to be bullied and treated as a vassal state.
This is why I wish to encourage every person in Switzerland who values real friendship between the US and Switzerland to sign the referendum to repeal FATCA in Switzerland.
The Swiss government recently agreed to enforce FATCA on every Swiss bank. They must report on accounts defined as belonging to ‘US persons’. The US government is however the only one who can decide who a ‘US person’ is, and Switzerland has already agreed to accept all future modifications to FATCA.
This is pure bullying against Switzerland, and were any other country to attempt similar legislation aimed at the US, it would be considered an act of war. The criminal actions of a few Swiss bankers are leading to the subjugation of the entire Swiss banking sector (not to mention other sections of the economy), and Swiss politicians have accepted this with hardly a word of protest.
The referendum to stop FATCA has been launched, and a core group of volunteers is fighting tooth and nail to get the necessary 50,000 signatures before the deadline. It’s a difficult struggle though.
The banks and the large parties are too afraid of the US to mount any resistance, and the average Swiss voter doesn’t yet see how FATCA will affect them personally. By the time they do, it will be too late.
This referendum is a small grass roots movement that needs your help.
Here’s what you can do:
– Go to www.stop-fatca.ch, download the referendum sheet (http://www.lldc.ch/wa_files/referendum_fatca.pdf), and get as many signatures as possible. If you can’t sign yourself (you must be Swiss to sign), find a friend who is willing to sign.
Then send the sheet to:
FATCA
Le Lobby des Citoyens
Rue du Conseil-Général 20
1205 Genève
Please try to send your letters before 16 December. The holiday season means that most communes will be closed, and it will be very difficult getting the signatures validated in time for the 16 January deadline. Every signature counts though, so keep them coming until the very end.
If every American in Switzerland could just get one or two signatures, we’d easily have enough signatures, and we would be making a giant leap towards killing FATCA for good.
– We need every volunteer who is willing to help us. We are working hard and setting up stands to inform people and to collect signatures. But we need help. If you have the time, and are willing to stand outside in the ever colder weather, we’d love to have your support. Send an email to: info@lldc.ch or call 022 807 08 32 to find out more.
– Contact your local representatives and political leaders and ask what they are doing about FATCA. The large Swiss parties have sold out the country to protect the interests of the large banks. They are hoping this law will pass unnoticed. We need to make some noise and stir things up.
FATCA is a steamroller coming down on the world economy, and Americans abroad are going to be this law’s first victims. We can choose to fight and stop FATCA in its tracks, and if we work together we will succeed.
Spread the word to as many people as possible, and good luck!
Richard
@no ref
Unfortunately nobody has any idea or is willing to give out any numbers. I don’t think it will reach the 50k threshold. I live in the German speaking part of CH and have neither seen nor heard anything about the referendum. If it does reach the 50k threshold I hope it is “WELL” over the limit ’cause somebody in Bern just might have a reason and the ability to discredit a few of those signatures! 😈
Today’s GenevaLunch has an article on the unfolding US-CH tax deal debacle called “Swiss gov’t faces heat over “US Programme””:
http://genevalunch.com/2013/12/09/swiss-govt-faces-heat-over-us-programme-update/
With any luck, the Swiss finance minister will be chased out of the government for this fiasco.
@Innocente
Well, the Swiss finance minister has certainly sold Swiss banks down the river, hasn’t she? The Swiss government has seen to it that nearly every bank in Switzerland is as culpable as UBS in promoting US offshore tax evasion! How is a bank like PostFinance any different from a Canadian bank that did not actively promote tax evasion, and has an even greater number of ‘non-compliant’ US customers? The difference is the deal they made with devil. Canada BE WARNED!
Isn’t any of the media gutsy enough and honest enough to point out that US banks who have actively aided money laundering of criminal proceeds in the US are considered ‘too big to prosecute”?
For example, regarding US banks:
““I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them,” Mr. Holder told lawmakers. Prosecutors, he said, must confront the problem that “if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.”
Mr. Holder, however defended his agency. Federal prosecutors, he said, have been “as aggressive as they could be, brought cases where we think we could have brought them,” he said.
After the hearing, the panel’s top Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, issued a statement calling Mr. Holder’s remarks “stunning.” Mr. Holder “ recognized that in effect, the big banks and their senior executives have a get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said.
Mr. Holder’s comments highlight a dilemma the Justice Department has wrestled with for years. The department at times has shown a reluctance to prosecute companies even when they aren’t large systemic players in the financial system. That’s because of the potential collateral consequences of a prosecution, including the concern that damage from a company’s indictment could cause innocent employees to lose their jobs.”….. from ‘Holder: Banks May Be Too Large to Prosecute’ ‘ March 6, 2013, 6:12 PM WSJ
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/03/06/holder-banks-may-be-too-large-to-prosecute/
and see;
‘Wachovia to Pay $160 Million to End Money Laundering Probe’
By David Voreacos – March 18, 2010
“…….Wachovia admitted “serious and systemic” violations of the Bank Secrecy Act that let drug cartels launder at least $110 million through exchange houses. Drug dealers used Wachovia accounts to buy airplanes, and U.S. authorities seized “at least four” of those aircraft with more than 20,000 kilograms in cocaine, Wachovia admitted in U.S. District Court in Miami.
“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations while laundering at least $110 million in drug proceeds,” Jeffrey Sloman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said yesterday at a Miami news conference.
The violations were the largest ever of the Bank Secrecy Act, which is designed to curb money laundering, authorities said.”…….
from http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=avbx.9LIE6.A
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tedkaufman/2013/07/29/why-doj-deemed-bank-execs-too-big-to-jail/
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/money-laundering-the-drug-problem-at-banks/?_r=0
and,
…”Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year’s “deferred prosecution” has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.
More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico’s gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.
“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank’s $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement….”…. from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs ‘How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico’s murderous drug gangs’ Ed Vulliamy , The Observer, Sunday 3 April 2011
and,
http://www.examiner.com/article/international-and-u-s-banks-make-millions-from-laundering-drug-money
Instead, for Swiss banks we have this:
…”The “US programme” calls for the banks to sign a non-prosecution agreement by the end of 2013. The banks that sign will admit to breaking US tax laws and exchange some information on their clients, although precisely what information, how the requests from the US will be handled and what else this involves is unclear.
The US DOJ deal includes the possibility the American government would levy fines that could be as high as 50 percent of a bank’s previously undeclared assets held by “US persons”….”……….
@bubblebustin:
With one million USPs in Canada, the Canadian banking system is shaping up to be a new revenue stream for the overextended US government. Watch for a deal between the US and Canada like the one for Switzerland.
Valiant Bank, a regional bank in central Switzerland, has decided to apply for Category 2, according to its website and Reuters, the first bank to officially announce:
“Given its strong market position in the Swiss Mittelland, Valiant also has a number of US persons in its client base (less than 0.1% of the total of 400,000 Valiant clients). Most of these clients have a strong connection to Switzerland.
The examination of client files for US persons found that Valiant has never actively solicited US persons
or visited clients in the USA. Nevertheless, the possibility that individual clients have not declared their assets in compliance with tax law cannot be ruled out. For reasons of legal certainty and to ensure a fast and sustainable settlement, particularly in light of the fact that a single case of undeclared assets effectively makes classification in category 3 and 4 of the US program impossible, the Valiant Board of
Directors has opted for category 2 participation.
The costs of the US program will not jeopardize the financial stability of Valiant in any way. This decision does not endanger the distribution of an unchanged dividend.”
http://www.valiant.ch/fileadmin/medien/Press_release_Valiant_to_take_part_in_US_program.pdf
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/09/tax-switzerland-idUSL6N0JO3L420131209
I looked at Valiant’s website – it is in German and French, but not English. It does not appear to be a bank interested in dealing with Americans, unless an American customer spoke German or French and lived here.
This is a shakedown of banks in Switzerland under the guise of guilty until proven innocente.
@Innocente, what do you expect? The whole US premise is that all foreign banks are by definition helping people cheat on their tax obligations. There is no proven innocent, it’s just a question of how guilty (how much can we squeeze them for) any one bank is.
Today’s Swissinfo.ch has an article “US tax deal could prove deadly for small banks”. Here’s an excerpt:
“Small banks have been horrified to learn that dual Swiss-US citizens are also being targeted by the US treaty. In addition, the US agreement holds banks to blame for merely failing to notice their clients hiding assets from the US tax authorities, as opposed to actively encouraging evasion.
“Some banks cannot say for certain if they count US citizens among their clients who have failed to tax their assets or make voluntary disclosures in the US,” Rolf Zaugg, chief executive of the Zurich Regional Bank and chairman of the Clientis regional group, told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper.”
Another quote:
“The DoJ has warned against banks trying to downplay their liability or hoodwink the US authorities.
“There are banks who say: ‘We have only done a little bit wrong therefore we belong in group three’,” Kathryn Keneally, assistant attorney-general at the DoJ’s tax division told the SonntagsZeitung newspaper last month. “But these banks would be well advised to choose group two.”
The underlying message is clear: unless a bank knows that it is 100% squeaky clean it should count itself as criminal. But by joining the Swiss-US deal it can reduce its criminal liability to a civil offence and pay a financial penalty.”
Comment: many of these banks haven’t done anything wrong. The way the US programme is written is that if a bank has a USP as a customer, it is guilty. Kathryn Keneally is a propagandist in the tradition of Robert Stack and Josef G.
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/US_tax_deal_could_prove_deadly_for_small_banks.html?cid=37501974
@ Innocente
Thank you for that link. That is precisely what I was looking for to include in an e-mail I’m about to sent Minister Flaherty. Perfect timing!
The big difference between Canada and Switzerland is that Switzerland is considered a tax haven, Canada is not. Don’t optics count for anything? Where’s DOS right now?
Read DOS’s mission statement:
“Advance freedom for the benefit of the American people and the international community by helping to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world composed of well-governed states that respond to the needs of their people, reduce widespread poverty, and act responsibly within the international system.
–From the FY 2012 Agency Financial Report,
released November 2012”
@ bubblebustin
If the USA gets away with its extortion of Swiss banks I really think that will embolden it to go after banks in Canada and elsewhere, whether a country is considered a tax haven or not. Look at how the TSA no-fly list grew exponentially once it got rolled out. The USA sees a penalty bonanza ahead with a bonus of reducing its competition worldwide. Someone has to put the brakes on this extortion express.
Does anybody have the courage to state the obvious:
“You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
source:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~lillsie/McCarthyism/downfall.html
FATCA is worse than extortion. It is hypocritical extortion.
@Em
Doesn’t it just BURN you that they won’t apply the same principles against themselves that they are so willing to inflict upon the rest of the world?
Swiss banks hit deadline to reveal hidden accounts to US:
“Geneva University law professor Xavier Oberson said the banks would be better off falling into line, while business lawyer Douglas Hornung advised against that in a recent opinion piece in the Le Temps daily.
“If the United States is threatening all the Swiss banks that it will block their access to the US market and to conducting operations in dollars, let it say so clearly, and let Switzerland take the country before … the World Trade Organization for abusing its dominant position,” he wrote.
“But please, don’t give in to inexcusable blackmail and let us remain the proud masters of our destiny, and of our past. We have a choice,” he added.”
http://www.france24.com/en/20131209-swiss-banks-hit-deadline-reveal-hidden-accounts-us
What kind of country would cause its citizens so much suffering and treat them as expendable in something that is nothing less than a protection money scheme? The sense of betrayal must be palatable for Swiss USP’s 🙁 🙁 :_(
@bubblebustin
What kind of country that preaches equality and justice can bully and use extortion for power and control? Only 68 years ago an evil oppressive axis was defeated. It seems we are seeing history repeat itself. This time the bullies are on our continent.
How this can happen when all the world leaders are meeting together to celebrate the life of a man who succeeded in ending apartide in south africa? How can the 4 US Presidents be present there, knowing their country is practicing apartide with its own citizens? How hypocritcal they are. For shame. And shame to our government in submitting to this giving up our sovereignty to allow its own citzens to surrender their rights to banking privacy. The irony is that the USA will not stop their own tax havens in their own country and will Not reciprocate as promised . The aboriginals know all about the broken treaties. This is one more broken agreement. This is all about greed and power.
I suggest that anyone who knows a bank manager or higher grade bank staff send the SwissInfo link that Innocente’s posted to them so they can see what may lie in wait for Canadian banks.
I agree with Em. If the US is successful in getting millions out of the Swiss banks, what’s to stop them going after other banks in the world – whether they’re considered tax havens or not? The US isn’t interested in that; they’re interested in raking in as much as they can in penalties/fines and protecting their own tax haven states.
Thanks, Medea. We’re on it. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
@ Medea
Under FATCA’s definitions, Canada – not Switzerland – is probably the world’s largest offshore banking centre for so-called US persons.
How many Canadian financial institutions hold accounts for so-called “US persons”? Here’s a VERY conservative estimate. According to Canada’s 2006 Census, 316,350 Canadians reported American as being their ethnicity. How many of those 316,350 have any kind of financial account in Canada: chequing, or savings account, RRSP, RESP, mutual fund investment, company pension plan, joint account? A conservative assumption: 75%.
Assuming 75% of the Canadians reporting American ethnicity have some kind of financial account = 237,244 accounts. This is a conservative estimate – many people have multiple accounts for savings, investing, retirement, education, small businesses, etc.
Under FATCA, these hundreds of thousands of Canadian accounts are potentially illicit and a legal hazard to the institutions harboring them. Even if they contain money earned, in Canada by a Canadian citizen, reported to the Canadian Revenue Agency, and taxed in Canada, if the account holder was born on US soil, it is now an “offshore financial account” and the financial institution has a FATCA problem.
In reality there are FAR more than 316 thousand so-called “US persons” in Canada; and probably more than 1 MILLION Canadian financial accounts that would violate FATCA. Compared to Canada, Switzerland is likely an “also-ran” in any kind of “Undeclared Offshore Bank Accounts of US Persons” contest!
The big question: how will Canadian financial institution identify these accounts, assuming the account holder lives and works in Canada, has a Canadian address, opened the account with Canadian ID, the source income is Canadian, the account holder has a Canadian SIN, and is a Canadian citizen or lawful permanent resident? Asking national origin or place of birth is unlawful, according to the Human Rights Act that governs federally regulated banks.
@Wondering
Case in point: my husband and I between us had 52 bank accounts over the course of eight years. Accounts we held separately, together, with our kids, our parents, mortgage providers, investments…
Yes, how will USP’s be identified if they don’t have it tattoo’d on their foreheads? Seems to me a lot of people will slip through the cracks this way, making FFI’s extremely vulnerable if relying solely on self-certification.
You have to admit that the US government is doing a bang up job getting our tax filing requirements known to us with relatively little output on their part. Too bad about the throwing the baby out with the bathwater part.
@ bubblebustin and Wondering
Based on the Swiss situation I don’t think the banks would have to be super sleuths, looking for clues and tell-tale signs of US personhood. They might simply send ALL their clients a notice to fess up to being a USP or risk account closure. Then the non-USPs would have to prove they are non-USPs and the USPs would be faced with refusing to fess up (i.e. become recalcitrants) or fess up to their US personhood and then prove they are totally US tax compliant. Recalcitrants and those who didn’t adequately prove they are US tax compliant could have their accounts closed. Of course, the government would have to find some way to make it legal for the banks to demand this information (definitely a sticky wicket human rights wise) and legal to close recalcitrant or non-compliant accounts BUT where there’s a will (motivated by US threats) there will be a way. Closing accounts based on either recalcitrance or non-compliance would create an uproar for sure. Would any government want to go there, unless it was totally comfortable with the preparedness of its police state apparatus? Anyway, this is all worst case scenario conjecture. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this. This is why we keep doing what we are doing. We don’t want it to get to the worst case scenario and we have people like Elizabeth May, Ted Hsu, Scott Brison and more on our side.
New post at Phil Hodgen Law:
This is the first I’ve seen about freezing 50% of account balances.
Go to: http://hodgen.com/blog/
In Switzerland, Vontobel bank chose category 3, rejecting pressure from Bern and surprising everyone. Vontobel is a bank which still accepts wealthy American Investors. Not only that, but it has been expanding its business in the US. So, one would think of it as being a stereotyped “tax cheat”. Yet, Vontobel is saying that it can prove its innocence.
Valiant Bank, Berner Kantonalbank and Cornèr Bank all chose to be accused of being “tax cheats”. Yet, they have almost no US Clients, don’t do US business and thus cannot be “tax cheats”.
So, the “tax cheats” are clearly not the tax cheats, and the non-tax cheats are the “cheating” suspects who didn’t chase away the Americans.
@tdott
I guess I’m one of those grandmas on the ‘conveyor belt to oblivion’ Phil Hodgen describes. At least I’m at the front of oblivion, because if what he says is true, oblivion is going to get pretty full.