Under investigation...

 

18.05.2015

The Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) and the Association of Foreign Banks in Switzerland (AFBS), which organised the media round table on May 14, broadly welcomed the automatic exchange of tax information, despite both arguing against the proposal when it was mooted in 2008.

 

“You will break your teeth on banking secrecy,” former Swiss Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz told the world that year.

 

A year later UBS was fined $780 million (CHF720 million) by the United States for helping tax cheats, marking the beginning of the end for Swiss secrecy laws.

 

Since then, Credit Suisse has faced a much higher fine while Wegelin and other banks have been driven out of business by US investigations. At present around a dozen banks in Switzerland are under active criminal investigation in the US and many more face fines under a non-criminal prosecution agreement agreed between the two countries.

 

France and Belgium are among other countries either prosecuting Swiss banks or holding investigations.

 

AFBS President Frank Morra believes that the introduction of automatic information exchange could help halt the recent trend of foreign banks pulling out of Switzerland.

 

“With this system, foreign banks will start to grow stronger in future as we restore confidence in tax transparency,” he said.