Something very significant happened yesterday. For the first time in history, a Swiss bank (UBS) came out of its shroud of secrecy and agreed to provide the names of 250 account holders to the US government authorities. Here is the report on it.
This should be a wake-up call for Indian tax authorities as Indians are rumored to be the second largest investors in these Swiss secret bank accounts. In fact all countries should start a concerted effort to dismantle this veil of secrecy around the Swiss banking system, so that the next best option for a criminal looking to offshore his loot becomes some unstable country like Cayman islands, thereby reducing the incentive to send money offshore.
I have always wondered why on earth a democratic, civilized country would open up its banks for all sorts of criminals to load up, with a stupid tradition of maintaining customer privacy. Who knows, eventually we might even find accounts linked to Al Qaeda in these banks.
This should be a wake-up call for Indian tax authorities as Indians are rumored to be the second largest investors in these Swiss secret bank accounts. In fact all countries should start a concerted effort to dismantle this veil of secrecy around the Swiss banking system, so that the next best option for a criminal looking to offshore his loot becomes some unstable country like Cayman islands, thereby reducing the incentive to send money offshore.
I have always wondered why on earth a democratic, civilized country would open up its banks for all sorts of criminals to load up, with a stupid tradition of maintaining customer privacy. Who knows, eventually we might even find accounts linked to Al Qaeda in these banks.
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