The Netherlands is concerned about the increasing influence of Al Qaida in North Africa. The Hague wants to step up its partnership with Algeria against terrorism, Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen told the Lower House on Friday.
As far as international terrorism is concerned, "the most important threat unabatedly comes from Islamic terrorist groupings including Al Qaida," according to Verhagen. "Al Qaida's influence has unfortunately increased in the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the past year." However, "the threat has increased specifically in the North Africa/Sahel region," Verhagen adds.
Elementary for success in Afghanistan "is a clear approach by Pakistan". Media and experts say that the Pakistani government is too conciliatory and negotiates from a position of weakness, according to the minister. "The fear exists that a safe haven for terrorists will thereby again be permitted in the tribal areas. The Dutch government shares this concern."
In North Africa, the linking up of the Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat (GSPC) with Al Qaida has led to the emergence of the AQIM terrorist group. This has drawn attention to itself recently via some bloody attacks. "Organisations like AQIM also have network contacts in countries in Western Europe, and recent arrests in Austria and Germany show they also form a potential threat to the Netherlands."
Due to the regional mutual links between North African countries, Verhagen considers it "important to work closely with countries like Morocco and Algeria to reduce terrorism in the region and the influence of AQIM." Cooperation with Morocco has been stepped up in the past year. "The Netherlands is now in talks with Algeria to arrive at a similar partnership arrangement." This focuses on tackling radicalisation via the Internet and in prisons, and tackling the financing of terrorism, document fraud and detection of explosives.
In general, Verhagen places "great value on tackling the underlying factors" that contribute to extremism and terrorism. For this, he has three policy goals. These are "fostering the dialogue between cultures, encouraging reforms in Islamic/Arabic countries and removing the negative perceptions of the West in the Islamic/Arabic world, among other means by using public diplomacy." In combating terrorism, "respect for human rights is paramount."
Meanwhile, Verhagen is working on an anti-terrorism institute to be based in the Netherlands. CDA MP Coruz requested this in a Lower House motion in April. According to Verhagen, "the government will carry out further research to achieve this. I hope to be able to tell you more about this within a few months," he wrote to the House.
Source: NISNEWS
Showing posts with label Austria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Austria. Show all posts
on Saturday, May 19, 2012
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on Thursday, May 17, 2012
By Daniel Dombey in Washington, Financial Times, 15 May 2008
Bank Melli, Iran's biggest commercial bank, is set to be banned from operating in the European Union under proposals in the final stages of discussion in Brussels.
At present, the bank operates branches in the City of London, France and Germany, so blunting American calls for other jurisdictions to break off ties with Iranian institutions, particularly in the Gulf.
"It is important for the EU to come to agreement on stepping up financial pressure on Iranian banks as a means of demonstrating to the Iranian regime how seriously we take their nuclear proliferation," said a European diplomat.
But the time and effort it has taken to get agreement on the move, which comes after a year-long push by the US and its allies, highlight the problems Washington may face in its quest to win international support for tougher sanctions and so convince Tehran to rein in its nuclear programme.
"Many people around the world are looking to Europe on this issue," Stuart Levey, US treasury undersecretary, told the FT. "What Europe does is quite important."
The US effort dates back to last summer, when negotiations began on a UN Security Council resolution that Washington and its allies wanted to prevent Melli and another Iranian bank, Bank Saderat, from doing business internationally.
In October, the Bush administration intensified its effort with unilateral sanctions against a number of Iranian institutions – including both Melli and Saderat – measures that Washington pushed other jurisdictions to emulate.
"We call on responsible banks and companies around the world to terminate any business with Bank Melli, Bank Mellat [another Iranian bank], Bank Saderat, and all companies and entities of [Iran's] Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps," Hank Paulson, treasury secretary, said on that occasion.
However, Washington found itself caught in a "catch-22" when it pushed the UK, its closest ally, to close Melli and Saderat's operations in London. Britain said it could act only as part of a general EU decision and, within the EU, countries such as Germany, Austria, Spain and Italy called for a UN decision before they would proceed.
Seeking to break the impasse, the US, Britain and France finally won agreement on a UN Security Council resolution in March that merely called on member states to exercise "vigilance" over Iranian banks, especially Bank Melli and Bank Saderat, due to what it said was their link to proliferation and Iran's nuclear programme.
"It's pretty clear that the US had hoped that this would happen more quickly and perhaps be a little bit more robust," said Mr Levey.
Diplomats said the UN resolution was designed to "open the door" to an outright EU ban on the banks' subsidiaries in Europe. However, the EU has been reluctant to take action against Bank Saderat, which is principally faulted by the US for funnelling funds to Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement. The Islamist organisation is not on the EU's list of proscribed terrorist organisations.
Throughout the past year, Iran has continued to expand its nuclear programme, announcing plans last month to install 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium – although many western diplomats and analysts question their efficiency.
While Iran insists its programme is purely peaceful, the US and its allies accuse it of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
US diplomats add that at present they are reluctant to embark on an attempt to pass another UN Security Council resolution because of the risk that it will provide meagre returns while highlighting differences with Russia and China, which are sceptical about further sanctions.
But Mr Levey said the financial sanctions, international warnings about the risk of money laundering and terror-financing in Iran, and related moves by international banks to scale down business with Tehran had had a big impact.
"It certainly has made the cost of financing [in Iran] to the extent that anyone has offered it at all, much more expensive," he said.
http://money.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=563862
Bank Melli, Iran's biggest commercial bank, is set to be banned from operating in the European Union under proposals in the final stages of discussion in Brussels.
At present, the bank operates branches in the City of London, France and Germany, so blunting American calls for other jurisdictions to break off ties with Iranian institutions, particularly in the Gulf.
"It is important for the EU to come to agreement on stepping up financial pressure on Iranian banks as a means of demonstrating to the Iranian regime how seriously we take their nuclear proliferation," said a European diplomat.
But the time and effort it has taken to get agreement on the move, which comes after a year-long push by the US and its allies, highlight the problems Washington may face in its quest to win international support for tougher sanctions and so convince Tehran to rein in its nuclear programme.
"Many people around the world are looking to Europe on this issue," Stuart Levey, US treasury undersecretary, told the FT. "What Europe does is quite important."
The US effort dates back to last summer, when negotiations began on a UN Security Council resolution that Washington and its allies wanted to prevent Melli and another Iranian bank, Bank Saderat, from doing business internationally.
In October, the Bush administration intensified its effort with unilateral sanctions against a number of Iranian institutions – including both Melli and Saderat – measures that Washington pushed other jurisdictions to emulate.
"We call on responsible banks and companies around the world to terminate any business with Bank Melli, Bank Mellat [another Iranian bank], Bank Saderat, and all companies and entities of [Iran's] Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps," Hank Paulson, treasury secretary, said on that occasion.
However, Washington found itself caught in a "catch-22" when it pushed the UK, its closest ally, to close Melli and Saderat's operations in London. Britain said it could act only as part of a general EU decision and, within the EU, countries such as Germany, Austria, Spain and Italy called for a UN decision before they would proceed.
Seeking to break the impasse, the US, Britain and France finally won agreement on a UN Security Council resolution in March that merely called on member states to exercise "vigilance" over Iranian banks, especially Bank Melli and Bank Saderat, due to what it said was their link to proliferation and Iran's nuclear programme.
"It's pretty clear that the US had hoped that this would happen more quickly and perhaps be a little bit more robust," said Mr Levey.
Diplomats said the UN resolution was designed to "open the door" to an outright EU ban on the banks' subsidiaries in Europe. However, the EU has been reluctant to take action against Bank Saderat, which is principally faulted by the US for funnelling funds to Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia movement. The Islamist organisation is not on the EU's list of proscribed terrorist organisations.
Throughout the past year, Iran has continued to expand its nuclear programme, announcing plans last month to install 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium – although many western diplomats and analysts question their efficiency.
While Iran insists its programme is purely peaceful, the US and its allies accuse it of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
US diplomats add that at present they are reluctant to embark on an attempt to pass another UN Security Council resolution because of the risk that it will provide meagre returns while highlighting differences with Russia and China, which are sceptical about further sanctions.
But Mr Levey said the financial sanctions, international warnings about the risk of money laundering and terror-financing in Iran, and related moves by international banks to scale down business with Tehran had had a big impact.
"It certainly has made the cost of financing [in Iran] to the extent that anyone has offered it at all, much more expensive," he said.
http://money.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=563862
on Thursday, April 12, 2012
The Alpine principality will start helping other nations claw back missing tax revenues.
Timing is everything these days, especially for a tax haven like Liechtenstein. A day before finance ministers of the Group of 20 were due to meet to discuss new guidelines to stop tax evasion, one of the world’s favored destinations for such shenanigans said it would start helping other nations claw back their missing tax revenues.
The tiny Alpine principality said Thursday that it was dropping its distinction between tax evasion and tax fraud, an issue that has frustrated tax authorities in the United States and Germany because Liechtenstein previously insisted on only handing over data in cases of outright tax fraud.
It now says it has already begun “concrete talks” with other nations and was offering bilateral tax agreements in cases of tax fraud and tax evasion. "We are aware of our responsibility as part of a globally integrated economic area,” Prime Minister Otmar Hasler said. “With today's declaration, we are making our contribution to a joint solution that will make an effective enforcement of foreign tax claims possible.”
International organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have been lobbying for more transparency from tax havens like Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Luxembourg for many years now. But the crackdown has now reached a critical stage as governments around the world seek to tighten financial regulations to prevent another repeat of the credit crunch while desperately trying find new tax revenues.
France and Germany have already asked the OECD to prepare information on tax havens for the G-20 meeting in London on April 2. On Tuesday, France’s La Tribune reported that the OECD was adding Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, Singapore and Hong Kong to its list of noncooperative tax centers, which already included Liechtenstein.
Stephen Platt, chairman of the BakerPlatt Group and specialist in anti-money-laundering, said that Liechtenstein’s move was “essential” to its ongoing survival. "It is simply untenable within this climate and this environment for centers to continue not to criminalize the laundering of the proceeds of foreign tax evasion," he said, adding that in the long term such rules were “unsustainable and not good for your reputation.”
But the international backlash against tax havens by governments and the G-20 may also be too indiscriminate, he said, because of the “very real and distinguishing” differences between them. While Liechtenstein is only now amending its laws on tax evasion, other offshore financial centers like Jersey and Guernsey already did so a decade ago; Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and Singapore have not.
Meanwhile there is the other elephant in the room: banking secrecy. Liechtenstein seems keen to keep its rules in that area unchanged. "Our bank secrecy has always served to ensure the legitimate protection of the privacy of the citizen, which we will continue to retain,” Hasler said Thursday.
Platt believes that the G-20 nations are looking at tax evasion and banking secrecy as two related but distinctly important issues. “The criminalization of laundering of tax evasion is equally as important, [but] tax havens that do not address bank secrecy need to see it addressed,” he said.
Source: Forbes
Timing is everything these days, especially for a tax haven like Liechtenstein. A day before finance ministers of the Group of 20 were due to meet to discuss new guidelines to stop tax evasion, one of the world’s favored destinations for such shenanigans said it would start helping other nations claw back their missing tax revenues.
The tiny Alpine principality said Thursday that it was dropping its distinction between tax evasion and tax fraud, an issue that has frustrated tax authorities in the United States and Germany because Liechtenstein previously insisted on only handing over data in cases of outright tax fraud.
It now says it has already begun “concrete talks” with other nations and was offering bilateral tax agreements in cases of tax fraud and tax evasion. "We are aware of our responsibility as part of a globally integrated economic area,” Prime Minister Otmar Hasler said. “With today's declaration, we are making our contribution to a joint solution that will make an effective enforcement of foreign tax claims possible.”
International organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have been lobbying for more transparency from tax havens like Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Luxembourg for many years now. But the crackdown has now reached a critical stage as governments around the world seek to tighten financial regulations to prevent another repeat of the credit crunch while desperately trying find new tax revenues.
France and Germany have already asked the OECD to prepare information on tax havens for the G-20 meeting in London on April 2. On Tuesday, France’s La Tribune reported that the OECD was adding Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, Singapore and Hong Kong to its list of noncooperative tax centers, which already included Liechtenstein.
Stephen Platt, chairman of the BakerPlatt Group and specialist in anti-money-laundering, said that Liechtenstein’s move was “essential” to its ongoing survival. "It is simply untenable within this climate and this environment for centers to continue not to criminalize the laundering of the proceeds of foreign tax evasion," he said, adding that in the long term such rules were “unsustainable and not good for your reputation.”
But the international backlash against tax havens by governments and the G-20 may also be too indiscriminate, he said, because of the “very real and distinguishing” differences between them. While Liechtenstein is only now amending its laws on tax evasion, other offshore financial centers like Jersey and Guernsey already did so a decade ago; Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and Singapore have not.
Meanwhile there is the other elephant in the room: banking secrecy. Liechtenstein seems keen to keep its rules in that area unchanged. "Our bank secrecy has always served to ensure the legitimate protection of the privacy of the citizen, which we will continue to retain,” Hasler said Thursday.
Platt believes that the G-20 nations are looking at tax evasion and banking secrecy as two related but distinctly important issues. “The criminalization of laundering of tax evasion is equally as important, [but] tax havens that do not address bank secrecy need to see it addressed,” he said.
Source: Forbes
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on Friday, April 6, 2012
Police said Thursday they had arrested two people linked to international money laundering crimes on the Internet.
"The suspects were arrested two days ago in Medan *in North Sumatra*," National Police chief of criminal investigation division Com. Gen. Susno Duadji told The Jakarta Post.
"They are suspected of committing fraud via the Internet," he added.
Tempo Interaktif news portal identified the suspects as Hendrianto, a 45-year old Indonesian citizen and Singaporean Yap Kok Yong Carlson, 30, who were swooped on at the Swiss Bell Hotel in Medan.
Susno said the police were still pursuing four other members of the syndicate, namely Andreas Nicholas, a UK national, Ricard Pereira of Singapore, Phanos Tenizes of Cyprus and Christanto of Indonesia.
Susno said the four fugitives were already on an international wanted list of criminals.
"We are cooperating with the British Interpol to nab Andreas," he told tempointeraktif.com earlier Thursday.
The investigation, Susno said, began when the Austrian Embassy received a report from one of its citizens, Emmeran Fischer, who had fallen victim to the syndicate.
Fischer, Susno said, saw an ad-vertisement for cheap electronic goods at www.alibaba.com. On Dec. 8, 2008, Fischer met with the suspects at the MMTC Warehouse, on Jl. Williem Iskandar No. B-20 in Pancing, Medan.
Their transaction involved 32,000 units of electronic goods, including 5,000 Nintendo Wiis, 5,000 Nintendo NHL Games, 5,000 Nintendo Pro Evolution Games, 5,400 Sony PS3s, and 800 Apple iPhones.
"The transaction had a value of around US$1 million," said Susno. Fischer transferred the money to Bank Mega's branch in Batam, through the JP Morgan Chase Bank in New York.
The delivery was made to company named Anugerah Jaya Perkasa. However, when the delivery deadline came around on Dec. 20, 2008, the purchased goods never arrived in Vienna, Austria.
The offenders claimed bad weather had impeded the delivery, and requested more money to send the goods by sea.
"The victim then sent an additional $900,000 for the delivery," Susno said. "But the promise was still not upheld."
Following leads from the report, the police went to the warehouse and found two boxes containing thousands of packages.
However, when the packages were thoroughly searched, police revealed they contained nothing more than bricks and paper.
"Only three packages contained electronic goods and they were the samples used during the initial transaction," he said.
The police and the Report and Financial Transaction Analysis Center (PPATK) are currently investigating a possible money laundering operation through three bank accounts belonging to the suspects.
The banks involved Panin Bank's branch in Medan, Bank Niaga's branch in Medan, Bank Mega's branch in Medan and DBS Bank in Singapore
Source: The Jakarta Post
"The suspects were arrested two days ago in Medan *in North Sumatra*," National Police chief of criminal investigation division Com. Gen. Susno Duadji told The Jakarta Post.
"They are suspected of committing fraud via the Internet," he added.
Tempo Interaktif news portal identified the suspects as Hendrianto, a 45-year old Indonesian citizen and Singaporean Yap Kok Yong Carlson, 30, who were swooped on at the Swiss Bell Hotel in Medan.
Susno said the police were still pursuing four other members of the syndicate, namely Andreas Nicholas, a UK national, Ricard Pereira of Singapore, Phanos Tenizes of Cyprus and Christanto of Indonesia.
Susno said the four fugitives were already on an international wanted list of criminals.
"We are cooperating with the British Interpol to nab Andreas," he told tempointeraktif.com earlier Thursday.
The investigation, Susno said, began when the Austrian Embassy received a report from one of its citizens, Emmeran Fischer, who had fallen victim to the syndicate.
Fischer, Susno said, saw an ad-vertisement for cheap electronic goods at www.alibaba.com. On Dec. 8, 2008, Fischer met with the suspects at the MMTC Warehouse, on Jl. Williem Iskandar No. B-20 in Pancing, Medan.
Their transaction involved 32,000 units of electronic goods, including 5,000 Nintendo Wiis, 5,000 Nintendo NHL Games, 5,000 Nintendo Pro Evolution Games, 5,400 Sony PS3s, and 800 Apple iPhones.
"The transaction had a value of around US$1 million," said Susno. Fischer transferred the money to Bank Mega's branch in Batam, through the JP Morgan Chase Bank in New York.
The delivery was made to company named Anugerah Jaya Perkasa. However, when the delivery deadline came around on Dec. 20, 2008, the purchased goods never arrived in Vienna, Austria.
The offenders claimed bad weather had impeded the delivery, and requested more money to send the goods by sea.
"The victim then sent an additional $900,000 for the delivery," Susno said. "But the promise was still not upheld."
Following leads from the report, the police went to the warehouse and found two boxes containing thousands of packages.
However, when the packages were thoroughly searched, police revealed they contained nothing more than bricks and paper.
"Only three packages contained electronic goods and they were the samples used during the initial transaction," he said.
The police and the Report and Financial Transaction Analysis Center (PPATK) are currently investigating a possible money laundering operation through three bank accounts belonging to the suspects.
The banks involved Panin Bank's branch in Medan, Bank Niaga's branch in Medan, Bank Mega's branch in Medan and DBS Bank in Singapore
Source: The Jakarta Post
By Elena Logutenkova and Joshua Gallu
March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Ever since UBS AG handed over the names of about 300 customers to the U.S. on Feb. 18, there’s been nothing but shuddering from Zurich’s Paradeplatz to Geneva’s quartier des banques.
The decision marked the first time Switzerland lifted its banking secrecy laws, allowing UBS to pass on client data to avoid U.S. criminal charges. In the past two weeks, Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz said he’s willing to collect taxes on offshore accounts for the U.S., and Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf offered cooperation on some cases of tax evasion.
“That’s de facto abolishing banking secrecy,” said Regula Staempfli, a Swiss political scientist in Brussels who lectures at universities in Germany, France and Switzerland about European and Swiss political decision making. “Having broken the rule of law, we have no ground to refuse Brussels what we’ve given Washington.”
Switzerland can’t ignore U.S. demands because UBS and Credit Suisse Group AG earned more revenue in the Americas from 2004 to 2007 than they did in their home market, company reports show. The government’s concessions to protect UBS, the country’s biggest bank, threaten to undermine a cornerstone of the Swiss banking industry, which manages $2 trillion for foreign clients and accounted for 8.5 percent of the domestic economy in 2007, according to the Swiss Bankers Association in Basel.
At stake are the jobs of the 130,000 people who work at banks in the 26 cantons of Switzerland, representing about 4 percent of the country’s workforce.
‘Under Pressure’
Swiss law currently allows for bank secrecy to be lifted only when there’s a criminal offense, such as tax fraud or money laundering. Tax evasion, or forgetting to declare income, isn’t a crime in Switzerland, and banks aren’t required to inform authorities of funds that may be undeclared.
“We’re under pressure,” said Christophe Darbellay, head of the Christian People’s Party, the third-largest in parliament after the anti-immigrant People’s Party and the Social Democrats. “Today we’re talking about the difference between tax fraud and tax evasion. Tomorrow there will be another issue.”
Thomas Borer, a former Swiss ambassador to the U.S. and Germany who led a task-force in a dispute over Holocaust assets a decade ago, said the government should have acted to defend its bank secrecy before Zurich-based UBS ran into troubles.
Lost Taxes
“For 10 years we neglected to come up with a strategy for Switzerland as a financial center,” Borer said in a telephone interview from Zurich, where he is a board member of Renova Management AG, an investment company owned by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. “We didn’t find allies who believe in our concept of Swiss banking. We just sit in our Swiss bunker and complain.”
Offshore accounts in countries such as Switzerland cost the U.S. about $100 billion in taxes annually, according to estimates from Michigan Senator Carl Levin. The U.K. probably loses at least 4 billion pounds ($5.6 billion) a year in revenue, the London-based Trades Union Congress reported March 1.
With governments around the world facing budget deficits from the financial crisis, patience with Switzerland’s position is running out from Washington to Paris and Berlin. On Feb. 19, a day after UBS agreed to give out the 300 client names, the U.S. government sued it to force the disclosure of as many as 52,000 names of American customers who allegedly hid their Swiss accounts from tax authorities. The following weekend, European leaders said they will crack down on tax havens and threatened “sanctions” against “uncooperative jurisdictions.”
Call for Diplomacy
Mark Branson, the chief financial officer of UBS’s wealth management and Swiss bank division, told Levin and his colleagues at a hearing on March 4 that the company won’t turn over the names of any more clients.
UBS has already “complied with the summons to the fullest extent possible without subjecting its employees to criminal prosecution in Switzerland” under bank-secrecy laws, Branson said. UBS has said the dispute should be resolved through diplomacy and not the U.S. lawsuit filed in Miami federal court.
Threatened with the loss of their competitive advantage, even Geneva’s traditionally reserved bankers have joined the debate. Ivan Pictet, senior managing partner at Pictet & Cie., said the domestic banking industry may shrink by as much as 50 percent if the country lifts the distinction between tax fraud and tax evasion.
Swiss banks contributed about 20 percent to the country’s economic growth in the past four years, said Bruno Parnisari, a government economist.
UBS’s Ambition
UBS and Zurich-based Credit Suisse, the second-largest Swiss bank, generated 36 percent of their revenue in the Americas in the four years through 2007, compared with 34 percent in Switzerland and 22 percent in the rest of Europe, Middle East and Africa, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“The ambition of the two big Swiss banks is to be global players,” said Teodoro Cocca, professor of wealth management at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. “If you have that vision, you can’t afford not to be present in the biggest capital market of the world.”
The Swiss government has been weakened at home since it gave in to the Feb. 18 ultimatum by the U.S. The decision allowed UBS to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement, in which it admitted conspiring to help clients conceal assets from the Internal Revenue Service.
Merz, 66, who currently holds Switzerland’s rotating presidency, was criticized by Swiss media over the decision. An editorial in the Zurich-based Tages-Anzeiger newspaper said Switzerland was without leadership, and the tabloid Blick portrayed the country as a “banana republic” for breaking its own laws.
‘Caught Pants Down’
“They were caught with their pants down,” Staempfli said. “Merz had said that banking secrecy isn’t negotiable. You don’t say that because everything is negotiable in politics.”
Within two weeks of the deal, UBS replaced Chief Executive Officer Marcel Rohner, who headed the unit accused of helping Americans evade taxes before becoming CEO 18 months ago, and 59- year-old Peter Kurer, the bank’s legal counsel before he was named Chairman less than a year ago. The bank has denied allegations in Swiss newspapers that the two knew of structures aimed at defrauding the U.S.
UBS called 65-year-old veteran banker Oswald Gruebel, who turned around Credit Suisse in 2003 after two years of losses, out of retirement to succeed Rohner, 44. It proposed former Finance Minister Kaspar Villiger, 68, as chairman. During Villiger’s time at the finance ministry, Switzerland enacted legislation against money laundering and agreed to a European Union plan on the taxation of savings income.
‘Declaration of War’
The government has scheduled a press conference for today to provide results of its discussions on UBS and the country’s banking secrecy law. It has proposed setting up a task force to deal with the U.S. legal proceedings and scheduled talks with government officials in Austria and Luxembourg to discuss blacklists for so-called tax havens.
Levin, who oversees the U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating UBS, proposed new laws this week to stop Americans from using offshore financial centers to evade taxes, supporting legislation previously sponsored by President Barack Obama. The Michigan Democrat wants to impose tougher requirements on taxpayers with offshore accounts and give the Treasury Department the authority to take action against foreign jurisdictions that impede tax enforcement.
‘Cash Cow’
“Bank secrecy is a cash cow in Switzerland,” Levin said at the March 4 hearing held by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “Conduct that actively facilitates tax evasion amounts to a declaration of war by offshore secrecy jurisdictions against honest, hardworking taxpayers. We’re determined to fight back and end the abuses inflicted on us by those tax havens.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee on the same day that the government will mount an “ambitious” program to crack down on companies that use offshore locales to avoid paying taxes.
Merz said last week he’s willing to make an agreement with the U.S. that’s similar to an accord with the European Union, under which Switzerland collects taxes on offshore accounts anonymously on behalf of the EU. Widmer-Schlumpf said after a meeting this week with Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General David Margolis that the government will review whether to treat “gross” tax evasion the same as tax fraud.
“Switzerland has to move from being an obstacle to an engine of international regulations,” said Christian Levrat, head of the Social Democratic Party, in an interview. “That means giving up the distinction between tax evasion and tax fraud.”
‘Fishing Expeditions’
While cooperation on gross tax evasion may not be enough to satisfy the U.S. and EU, the Swiss are concerned that assistance in tax evasion cases may open the door for foreign countries to request data they don’t need, said Peter V. Kunz, head of the business law department at the University of Bern.
“Switzerland is afraid of fishing expeditions from abroad,” Kunz said. “It cannot be that just out of curiosity, without any hint of illegality, foreign authorities come to Switzerland and ask for information.”
Swiss banks manage 27 percent of the $7.3 trillion in offshore global assets, the biggest market share ahead of the U.K.’s Channel Islands with 24 percent and Luxembourg with 14 percent, according to the bankers association. Offshore banking accounts for 3 percent of the Swiss economy and tax revenue, and 1 percent of all jobs in the country.
Baer to Vontobel
If banking secrecy “disappears, clients will no longer have any reason to travel 500 kilometers to see their banker,” Pictet told Le Temps in an interview published Feb. 24. “The traditional Swiss banking know-how in wealth management wouldn’t, in itself, be enough to compensate for the lack of protection in the private sphere.”
Gruebel, UBS’s new CEO, said in an interview with the Finanz & Wirtschaft newspaper in Zurich that client confidentiality laws have “strongly helped” Switzerland in the past.
“We’re talking about enormous sums,” he said. “This is not just about taxes, but rather about a branch of the economy that creates jobs and income.”
Zurich-based Julius Baer Holding AG and Vontobel Holding AG, which cater to millionaires, owe 8 percent to 13 percent of their market value to the banking secrecy law, according to a 2005 study sponsored by the University of Zurich and the Swiss National Science Foundation. The study examined share price performance from 2002 to 2003, when Switzerland and the EU held talks on banking secrecy.
UBS, Switzerland’s largest wealth manager, has lost 22 percent of its market value since the U.S. obtained the client data last month, compared with a 17 percent drop in the 65-member Bloomberg Europe Banks and Financial Services Index. It beat the index in all but three years since the start of the decade.
“The government put its head down and ignored the situation and then panicked when they realized they were up against a wall,” said Cocca. “They’ll have to give in to reduce the pressure on Switzerland.”
Source: Bloomberg
March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Ever since UBS AG handed over the names of about 300 customers to the U.S. on Feb. 18, there’s been nothing but shuddering from Zurich’s Paradeplatz to Geneva’s quartier des banques.
The decision marked the first time Switzerland lifted its banking secrecy laws, allowing UBS to pass on client data to avoid U.S. criminal charges. In the past two weeks, Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz said he’s willing to collect taxes on offshore accounts for the U.S., and Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf offered cooperation on some cases of tax evasion.
“That’s de facto abolishing banking secrecy,” said Regula Staempfli, a Swiss political scientist in Brussels who lectures at universities in Germany, France and Switzerland about European and Swiss political decision making. “Having broken the rule of law, we have no ground to refuse Brussels what we’ve given Washington.”
Switzerland can’t ignore U.S. demands because UBS and Credit Suisse Group AG earned more revenue in the Americas from 2004 to 2007 than they did in their home market, company reports show. The government’s concessions to protect UBS, the country’s biggest bank, threaten to undermine a cornerstone of the Swiss banking industry, which manages $2 trillion for foreign clients and accounted for 8.5 percent of the domestic economy in 2007, according to the Swiss Bankers Association in Basel.
At stake are the jobs of the 130,000 people who work at banks in the 26 cantons of Switzerland, representing about 4 percent of the country’s workforce.
‘Under Pressure’
Swiss law currently allows for bank secrecy to be lifted only when there’s a criminal offense, such as tax fraud or money laundering. Tax evasion, or forgetting to declare income, isn’t a crime in Switzerland, and banks aren’t required to inform authorities of funds that may be undeclared.
“We’re under pressure,” said Christophe Darbellay, head of the Christian People’s Party, the third-largest in parliament after the anti-immigrant People’s Party and the Social Democrats. “Today we’re talking about the difference between tax fraud and tax evasion. Tomorrow there will be another issue.”
Thomas Borer, a former Swiss ambassador to the U.S. and Germany who led a task-force in a dispute over Holocaust assets a decade ago, said the government should have acted to defend its bank secrecy before Zurich-based UBS ran into troubles.
Lost Taxes
“For 10 years we neglected to come up with a strategy for Switzerland as a financial center,” Borer said in a telephone interview from Zurich, where he is a board member of Renova Management AG, an investment company owned by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. “We didn’t find allies who believe in our concept of Swiss banking. We just sit in our Swiss bunker and complain.”
Offshore accounts in countries such as Switzerland cost the U.S. about $100 billion in taxes annually, according to estimates from Michigan Senator Carl Levin. The U.K. probably loses at least 4 billion pounds ($5.6 billion) a year in revenue, the London-based Trades Union Congress reported March 1.
With governments around the world facing budget deficits from the financial crisis, patience with Switzerland’s position is running out from Washington to Paris and Berlin. On Feb. 19, a day after UBS agreed to give out the 300 client names, the U.S. government sued it to force the disclosure of as many as 52,000 names of American customers who allegedly hid their Swiss accounts from tax authorities. The following weekend, European leaders said they will crack down on tax havens and threatened “sanctions” against “uncooperative jurisdictions.”
Call for Diplomacy
Mark Branson, the chief financial officer of UBS’s wealth management and Swiss bank division, told Levin and his colleagues at a hearing on March 4 that the company won’t turn over the names of any more clients.
UBS has already “complied with the summons to the fullest extent possible without subjecting its employees to criminal prosecution in Switzerland” under bank-secrecy laws, Branson said. UBS has said the dispute should be resolved through diplomacy and not the U.S. lawsuit filed in Miami federal court.
Threatened with the loss of their competitive advantage, even Geneva’s traditionally reserved bankers have joined the debate. Ivan Pictet, senior managing partner at Pictet & Cie., said the domestic banking industry may shrink by as much as 50 percent if the country lifts the distinction between tax fraud and tax evasion.
Swiss banks contributed about 20 percent to the country’s economic growth in the past four years, said Bruno Parnisari, a government economist.
UBS’s Ambition
UBS and Zurich-based Credit Suisse, the second-largest Swiss bank, generated 36 percent of their revenue in the Americas in the four years through 2007, compared with 34 percent in Switzerland and 22 percent in the rest of Europe, Middle East and Africa, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“The ambition of the two big Swiss banks is to be global players,” said Teodoro Cocca, professor of wealth management at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. “If you have that vision, you can’t afford not to be present in the biggest capital market of the world.”
The Swiss government has been weakened at home since it gave in to the Feb. 18 ultimatum by the U.S. The decision allowed UBS to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement, in which it admitted conspiring to help clients conceal assets from the Internal Revenue Service.
Merz, 66, who currently holds Switzerland’s rotating presidency, was criticized by Swiss media over the decision. An editorial in the Zurich-based Tages-Anzeiger newspaper said Switzerland was without leadership, and the tabloid Blick portrayed the country as a “banana republic” for breaking its own laws.
‘Caught Pants Down’
“They were caught with their pants down,” Staempfli said. “Merz had said that banking secrecy isn’t negotiable. You don’t say that because everything is negotiable in politics.”
Within two weeks of the deal, UBS replaced Chief Executive Officer Marcel Rohner, who headed the unit accused of helping Americans evade taxes before becoming CEO 18 months ago, and 59- year-old Peter Kurer, the bank’s legal counsel before he was named Chairman less than a year ago. The bank has denied allegations in Swiss newspapers that the two knew of structures aimed at defrauding the U.S.
UBS called 65-year-old veteran banker Oswald Gruebel, who turned around Credit Suisse in 2003 after two years of losses, out of retirement to succeed Rohner, 44. It proposed former Finance Minister Kaspar Villiger, 68, as chairman. During Villiger’s time at the finance ministry, Switzerland enacted legislation against money laundering and agreed to a European Union plan on the taxation of savings income.
‘Declaration of War’
The government has scheduled a press conference for today to provide results of its discussions on UBS and the country’s banking secrecy law. It has proposed setting up a task force to deal with the U.S. legal proceedings and scheduled talks with government officials in Austria and Luxembourg to discuss blacklists for so-called tax havens.
Levin, who oversees the U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating UBS, proposed new laws this week to stop Americans from using offshore financial centers to evade taxes, supporting legislation previously sponsored by President Barack Obama. The Michigan Democrat wants to impose tougher requirements on taxpayers with offshore accounts and give the Treasury Department the authority to take action against foreign jurisdictions that impede tax enforcement.
‘Cash Cow’
“Bank secrecy is a cash cow in Switzerland,” Levin said at the March 4 hearing held by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “Conduct that actively facilitates tax evasion amounts to a declaration of war by offshore secrecy jurisdictions against honest, hardworking taxpayers. We’re determined to fight back and end the abuses inflicted on us by those tax havens.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee on the same day that the government will mount an “ambitious” program to crack down on companies that use offshore locales to avoid paying taxes.
Merz said last week he’s willing to make an agreement with the U.S. that’s similar to an accord with the European Union, under which Switzerland collects taxes on offshore accounts anonymously on behalf of the EU. Widmer-Schlumpf said after a meeting this week with Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General David Margolis that the government will review whether to treat “gross” tax evasion the same as tax fraud.
“Switzerland has to move from being an obstacle to an engine of international regulations,” said Christian Levrat, head of the Social Democratic Party, in an interview. “That means giving up the distinction between tax evasion and tax fraud.”
‘Fishing Expeditions’
While cooperation on gross tax evasion may not be enough to satisfy the U.S. and EU, the Swiss are concerned that assistance in tax evasion cases may open the door for foreign countries to request data they don’t need, said Peter V. Kunz, head of the business law department at the University of Bern.
“Switzerland is afraid of fishing expeditions from abroad,” Kunz said. “It cannot be that just out of curiosity, without any hint of illegality, foreign authorities come to Switzerland and ask for information.”
Swiss banks manage 27 percent of the $7.3 trillion in offshore global assets, the biggest market share ahead of the U.K.’s Channel Islands with 24 percent and Luxembourg with 14 percent, according to the bankers association. Offshore banking accounts for 3 percent of the Swiss economy and tax revenue, and 1 percent of all jobs in the country.
Baer to Vontobel
If banking secrecy “disappears, clients will no longer have any reason to travel 500 kilometers to see their banker,” Pictet told Le Temps in an interview published Feb. 24. “The traditional Swiss banking know-how in wealth management wouldn’t, in itself, be enough to compensate for the lack of protection in the private sphere.”
Gruebel, UBS’s new CEO, said in an interview with the Finanz & Wirtschaft newspaper in Zurich that client confidentiality laws have “strongly helped” Switzerland in the past.
“We’re talking about enormous sums,” he said. “This is not just about taxes, but rather about a branch of the economy that creates jobs and income.”
Zurich-based Julius Baer Holding AG and Vontobel Holding AG, which cater to millionaires, owe 8 percent to 13 percent of their market value to the banking secrecy law, according to a 2005 study sponsored by the University of Zurich and the Swiss National Science Foundation. The study examined share price performance from 2002 to 2003, when Switzerland and the EU held talks on banking secrecy.
UBS, Switzerland’s largest wealth manager, has lost 22 percent of its market value since the U.S. obtained the client data last month, compared with a 17 percent drop in the 65-member Bloomberg Europe Banks and Financial Services Index. It beat the index in all but three years since the start of the decade.
“The government put its head down and ignored the situation and then panicked when they realized they were up against a wall,” said Cocca. “They’ll have to give in to reduce the pressure on Switzerland.”
Source: Bloomberg
on Monday, April 2, 2012
by David Leigh
Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly questioned over €13m payment from British arms company
An Austrian count and lobbyist for the British arms company BAE has been arrested, making him the first of the company's global network of confidential agents to be held in custody in five years of bribery investigations by international authorities.
Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly is being detained in Austria after being arrested on Friday, a spokesman for the Vienna regional court for criminal matters, Christian Gneist, said. He faces a court hearing on 16 March.
Under Austrian law, pre-trial custody can last up to six months if an investigating judge deems it necessary.
Mensdorff-Pouilly owns a castle in Scotland and is married to the former Austrian health minister Maria Rauch-Kallat. He was arrested at his house in Luising, Austria, according to his lawyer, Harald Schuster, who claimed the accusations, which include money laundering, were groundless.
BAE, Europe's biggest arms manufacturer, declined to comment on the arrest.
The Austrian investigation, which follows one by British authorities, relates to lease agreements from 2003 and 2004. Hungary renewed a lease for 14 Gripen planes and the Czech government agreed to lease 14 planes over 10 years. BAE marketed the planes, which are produced by the Swedish company Saab, in which BAE has a 21% stake.
Mensdorff-Pouilly is being questioned in connection with a €13m (£11.6m) payment allegedly made to him by BAE, for whom he had been a consultant for 16 years. Documents which have emerged in the case link BAE to secret payments made to an intermediary company called Valurex, in Switzerland.
Following exposure by the Guardian of the original bribery allegations against BAE, a report last year by the retired British judge Lord Woolf said the arms giant had paid "insufficient attention" to ethical standards when doing arms deals. After strenuous lobbying by BAE, a British investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into bribery allegations in Saudi Arabia was halted by the then prime minister, Tony Blair, on the grounds it would compromise national security.
But the SFO continued to work with international prosecutors on allegations against BAE in eastern Europe, Tanzania, Chile and South Africa. They obtained production orders from BAE and its bankers, Lloyds TSB, which unearthed links with Mensdorff-Pouilly's companies.
Last year, the count was stopped for questioning by the SFO on the way home from Dalnaglar Castle in Perthshire, a property he bought after the conclusion of the Czech deals.
The US justice department has been negotiating with BAE about the possibility of a settlement in a parallel investigation into possible breaches of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Source: The Guardian
Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly questioned over €13m payment from British arms company
An Austrian count and lobbyist for the British arms company BAE has been arrested, making him the first of the company's global network of confidential agents to be held in custody in five years of bribery investigations by international authorities.
Count Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly is being detained in Austria after being arrested on Friday, a spokesman for the Vienna regional court for criminal matters, Christian Gneist, said. He faces a court hearing on 16 March.
Under Austrian law, pre-trial custody can last up to six months if an investigating judge deems it necessary.
Mensdorff-Pouilly owns a castle in Scotland and is married to the former Austrian health minister Maria Rauch-Kallat. He was arrested at his house in Luising, Austria, according to his lawyer, Harald Schuster, who claimed the accusations, which include money laundering, were groundless.
BAE, Europe's biggest arms manufacturer, declined to comment on the arrest.
The Austrian investigation, which follows one by British authorities, relates to lease agreements from 2003 and 2004. Hungary renewed a lease for 14 Gripen planes and the Czech government agreed to lease 14 planes over 10 years. BAE marketed the planes, which are produced by the Swedish company Saab, in which BAE has a 21% stake.
Mensdorff-Pouilly is being questioned in connection with a €13m (£11.6m) payment allegedly made to him by BAE, for whom he had been a consultant for 16 years. Documents which have emerged in the case link BAE to secret payments made to an intermediary company called Valurex, in Switzerland.
Following exposure by the Guardian of the original bribery allegations against BAE, a report last year by the retired British judge Lord Woolf said the arms giant had paid "insufficient attention" to ethical standards when doing arms deals. After strenuous lobbying by BAE, a British investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into bribery allegations in Saudi Arabia was halted by the then prime minister, Tony Blair, on the grounds it would compromise national security.
But the SFO continued to work with international prosecutors on allegations against BAE in eastern Europe, Tanzania, Chile and South Africa. They obtained production orders from BAE and its bankers, Lloyds TSB, which unearthed links with Mensdorff-Pouilly's companies.
Last year, the count was stopped for questioning by the SFO on the way home from Dalnaglar Castle in Perthshire, a property he bought after the conclusion of the Czech deals.
The US justice department has been negotiating with BAE about the possibility of a settlement in a parallel investigation into possible breaches of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Source: The Guardian
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