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Switzerland Next: Swiss Banks Set To Foward Confidential Bank Client Data To U.S. Officials
Complete the following SAT logic question:
- Cyprus : Russian depositors :: Switzerland : [X]
If you answered X = US depositors (for now... soon many more), you are correct.
It has been no secret that in the aftermath of the crackdown of the Obama administration on Swiss-based "whale" accounts, Swiss banks promptly gave up on the legacy model of bank secrecy which allowed them to fund a massive banking sector that has assets (and therefore liabilities) six times greater than the GDP of Switzerland. That this has led to a literal Swiss fear and loathing of anything American, is no surprise: after all banks have blamed the informal US accords, in which the US DOJ can now expose any and every Swiss bank client for the massive layoffs that have ensued in the past several years, hitting not only megabanks UBS and Credit Suisse, but all the smaller players as well.
Now, in the aftermath of the deposit tax in Cyprus, it appears that "wealth taxation" in Switzerland is about to be taken up a notch.
As the leading Zurich financial media NZZ reported and Reuters summarized, the country has reached a deal in principle with the United States over undeclared funds hidden by wealthy Americans in Swiss offshore bank accounts. Naturally, the state was quick to deny it - after all, the last thing they need is a prompt exodus of all big offshore accounts held locally as fears of a Cyprus "wealth tax" on big accounts spreads.
Alas, this may be precisely what is happening. From Reuters:
The plan outlined by the NZZ am Sonntag would see each Swiss bank with U.S. clients negotiating individual settlements with the United States for its role in hiding untaxed money.
Most of the 13 banks in the crosshairs of U.S. justice officials, which include Credit Suisse and Julius Baer, have said they are already in settlement negotiations.
What is new is that the remainder of Switzerland's more than 300 banks with U.S. clients would have to seek a U.S. settlement individually, according to the NZZ.
This in itself is not news. This next part, however, is:
Those banks would be required to "motivate" remaining U.S. clients to come clean to U.S. tax officials. If they failed to do so, confidential bank data would be forwarded to U.S. officials. The initial shipment of data from those banks would not include client names but, based on the data, U.S. officials would be able to submit a judicial aid requests to get the names of alleged tax evaders, the newspaper said.
So after all US "whale" accounts, aka alleged tax evaders, have their bank data fully exposed to the US government which will operate under the assumption (hardly too incorrect) that all US accounts in Switzerland have evaded taxes and thus are subject to the US government's just as forcible wealth re-appropriation, how long until all other European nations, most of them just as broke as the US, follow suit?
The question then is: how many of the oligarchs, Russian or otherwise, who avoided a complete wipe out and total capital controls in Cyprus, will wait to find out if the same fate will befall them in Switzerland? Or Luxembourg? Or Lichtenstein? Or Singapore?
Or any other formerly considered "tax-haven" nation?
Finally, is it clear yet to the world's uber-wealthy that the 2013 hunting season is now open, and that they, or rather their deposits, are the prey of every socialist government in the entire world?
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A good article on the background of the Cyprus banking problem:
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/06/13/how-a-greek-bank-infected-c...
And the Goldman connection:
"According to the memo’s author, internal auditor Costas Constantinou, the “highest degree of responsibility” for the purchase of Greek government bonds (GGB) lies with Bouloutas. The former CEO is said to have been directly involved “during the acquisition phase,” giving “direct personal instructions to the Greece Treasury staff in April and May 2009 to buy bonds,” and that he was in “direct negotiation with Goldman Sachs for the purchase of €1 billion bond (sic).”
The report notes that Bouloutas’ “subsequent handling of the issue was disastrous; he consistently rejected the idea of cutting our losses when this was really possible. He advocated to the end that we shall avoid the bulk of the losses because of the short-term nature of our holdings.”
Regarding a warning issued by the Central Bank of Cyprus against the purchase of Greek bonds, and the subsequent response by Popular, the memo says Bouloutas “failed to inform the BoD [board of directors] accordingly."
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/cyprus/popular-bank-had-chance-offload-greek-...
If this archbishop is able to do this, I would call it a bonafide miracle.
The Archbishop of Cyprus is planning to hold talks with Russian investors later this week in an effort to stop them fleeing the country, according to Greece's Kathimerini today.
Archbishop Chrysostomos is hoping to remind them how they've benefited through their time in Cyprus:
The leader of the Church of Cyprus said after the Sunday mass in Nicosia that on Thursday he is going to host a dinner with the chiefs of Russian companies that are active in Cyprus to convince them against taking their money away from the island so that the situation does not deteriorate further.
He added that he intends to remind them that their capital has for a long time been growing through interest, they have benefitted from their presence in Cyprus and that had they gone to another country the interest they would have got would have been just above zero.
Chrysostomos also called for the previous Cypriot government (who ruled the island until last month) to stand trial for creating the current financial situation. And he added that Cypriot people must learn to live on tighter budgets as well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/24/eurozone-crisis-cyprus-ba...
"Chrysostomos also called for the previous Cypriot government (who ruled the island until last month) to stand trial for creating the current financial situation."
There is already plenty of evidence that the "Cypriot president 'warned his friends to move money abroad' before financial crisis hit."
"Cypriot president Nikos Anastasiades 'warned' close friends of the financial crisis about to engulf his country so they could move their money abroad, it was claimed on Friday."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2297383/Cyprus-bailout-President...
Wanna bet there are a lot of banksters and politicos that KNEW the crisis was coming and therefore, warned their friends and families to get their funds out of the banks before this all happened? Surly, there are ways to track these funds that have left the country, and find out who told who what. Will justice ever be served as long as it takes its payoff from the banksters that own it too??
The squid has many tentacles.
when in doubt..."doszap."
This also coincides with private storage dumping all US citizens or those with US tax liabilities by June & all others to declare whether assets held under storage have been declared on any tax returns & if so under whih jurisdiction & when
If anyome has any intel on the Goldmoney rumour being kicked out of Viamat in the near future please share.
Anyome?
Suggest you move your Swiss assets down the road to Liechtenstein. Both are nice at this time if the year. The new place may not take you if you don't have enough zeroes to your name.
What is incredible is the utter pussies in Switzerland. How none of them dared to tell USSA to **** off is quite amazing.
Not as amazing as your apparent ignorance of the SWIFT system, and European banks' inability to operate without access to it.
"What is incredible is the utter pussies in Switzerland. How none of them dared to tell USSA to **** off is quite amazing."
Golly gee whiz, how can the babylonia empire of dust that calls money god, ever have a world-wide money god system if they can't track and trace every single transaction world-wide? This is after all, where all these money game antics are headed towards. One world digital money. All things money god are slowly steering towards that end...the babylonian bit-coin money god system. Swipe your bio-implant chip now, to engage in your daily business. Any unregistered implant chips will be immediately terminated with prejudice. No implant chip, no daily business using the new digital currency.
Beep!
Thxvip-33 clear...beep!
yodel-odel-ay-eeeee........uh-oh...
ARE THEY GOING TO GO AFTER GE, AAPL AND HALF THE S&P 500?
NAH...DIDN'T THINK SO
All the US is doing is, for want of a better word, going after the schmucks, which is to say people who hold accounts in their own name. Anyone
with even the most basic knowledge of these matters knows you never hold an account in your own name. For example you set up a Singaporean
trust who's real ownership is difficult if not impossible to determine, then open the Swiss account/s in the name of that trust. Then when the
information request is made to the Swiss authorities the accounts held by the Sinaporean trusts are ignored. There are all manner of different
trusts one can set up in different jurisdictions with cross ownership, chain ownership, (e.g Trust A in one jurisdiction owns Trust B in another
jurisdation which in turn owns banks accounts in tax havens in juridictions C, D & E.)
If you want to know more the following links are helpful:
http://www.secrecyjurisdictions.com/
http://www.financialsecrecyindex.com/2011results.html
An excellent primer on the world of tax havens is "Treasure Islands" by Nicholas Shaxson, which is pretty much up to date.
These fishing expeditions will, as I say, only get the fools. Having said that, what is clear is that individual ownership of bank
accounts in tax havens is being abolished.
Tax havens exist for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful, be they corporations or individuals. If they were shut down
altogether that would be surprising, more likely capital controls will be enacted between all Western countries and tax havens
so that individuals are incapable of transferring money to them. Said controls will, of course, not apply to multinational corporations
so that they can continue to legitimately defraud nation states of tax revenue by engaging in transfer pricing and thereby
continue the process of the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of the 0.1%, as so beautifully summarised by
George HW Bush so many years ago. However, the Chinese elite aren't going to shut down Hong Kong any time soon.
They need somewhere to have their money in the event things turn nasty in mainland China and because the money
was earned by graft, etc.
Sounds like this ultimately benefits China when they and their subsidaries are the only game outside the closed loop that "safe havens". Well safe until enough wealth parks in their jurisidictions.
All the more reason for a bitcoin styled decentral banking crypto-currency system with the coins being back by hard assets with the global coin coin value rate determined by the total amount of hard assets each country has in their dencentral banks and then sovereign coin value determined by whatever allocation of coins they have in system hashed to their country code id backed by the same allocation of hard assets for that particular sovereign states decentral banks. Your accounts are outside the reach of capital controls and no central banks fucking with the money supply. As long as crypto-currency algoritm is open to public scrutiny then it works since the people can be watchguards. Also if the coins fail the sovereigns still can just reissue local currencies right away against their hard assets. Who is left in the crypto-currency system the coins globally and sovereign level will just revalue accordingly to the remaining hard assets. It is debt free, and scalable by a simple iteration process that respects property rights, personal savings and respects them on each iteration as you scale up or down.
In any case there's a passport number to go along with that secret account.
"These fishing expeditions will, as I say, only get the fools."
Reminds one about when they put up these road blocks on the main highways with large signs that say "narcotics check ahead" and the cops sit at the off-ramps, and off the sides of the roads hidden to watch the traffic after it passes these signs. They are strategically placed for good hiding spots and ample off ramps to get off before where the "narcotics check ahead" road block is situated. What is funny is, when the driver gets to the "narcotics check ahead" point, there is often nothing there but a "slow" sign. They catch a lot of runners that way, which is what this sounds like, a "fishing expedition" to catch the runners.
The great repatriation.
Banking havens getting shut down and money pushed to the traditional money/power centres... ie... hmm London, NYC, HK...
Bismark, North Dakota.
Sounds like it is a condition for gold repatriation. I believe the US is going long on the ponzi with the hope of being able to go completely totaltarian before it collapses so they can enforce the system by the ultimate socialist coercion tactic. Dollar or death.
The Swiss banks will obviously not spill the beans on gold bullion transaction, unless they want the wrath of the Elders...
If the Chinese get around to fully co-operating and sign on to international financial and accounting agreements will the U.S. agree to expose all the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been money laundered out of China by former communist officials?Seems to me that the Feds have been turning a blind eye to all of this just because the commies are buying up most of the real estate on the west coast of the U.S.Which banks in the U.S. are hiding the rest of that commi-cash? Can the DOJ have it both ways? You bet,it's good for the U.S. banking crooks.
PLease, TPTB in both countries have been on the same page for quite a while. The goal has always been a working class that works for chinese wages, period. It's a corporatist's/fascist's wet dream.
is there any place one without a citizenship could live outside of any government jurisdiction ?
Damn i guess the closest place is the Moon
http://occupycorporatism.com/blueseed-floating-bilderberg-cities-where-the-elite-control-the-masses/
The paper-pushers of the world got us here, will they bear the brunt of the pain, I doubt it. Roll the motherfucking guillotines already. Nothing else "fixes" anything at this point. Time for the world to re-learn the true meaning of counterparty risk and bleed for it. Same as it ever was.
Lead by example and learn about counterparty risk firsthand.
Right. The underlying principle is that the future of banking depends on trust. If you can’t trust your currency, whose holding it or what the bankers are going to do with it, in the end, you’re not going to cooperate with them. You’re going to find a way around them; and if that’s not possible you’re going to see that they’re taken out.
The banking cartel is trying to shut down all the exits. Part of the financial elite’s intimidation is that there’s nothing we can do about it; so we should just give up.
Fortunately, there are people who won’t give up. A way will be found around these bankers, else they’ll be taken down. You can’t have the future of banking based on the principle that someone's trying his best to beat you.
In the same NZZ of tonight http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/wirtschaft/reflexe/der-pazifik-als-neues-mitte...
it says Russia is considering creating its own off-shore tax heavens Sachalin and the Kurilles.
"The more you tighten your grip... The more star systems will slip through your fingers" -- Princess Leia
"I love you" - Princess Leia
""I know" - Hans Solo
There is one group of mega-wealthy people whose Swiss Bank accounts will not be exposed - those of the well-connected politically. People like Jon Corzine, Tim Geithner, Bernie Madoff, Alan Greenspan, Vincent Basciano, Eric Holder, Domeneco Cefalu, George Bush, Warren Buffett, etc. will not be on any list submitted by the Swiss - whether or not they have such accounts.
The Reagan Revolution featured a lowering of confiscatory tax rates on the wealthy such that they did not need to hide their money. Since then, rates have creeped back up again to the point where hiding your wealth is worthwhile. This is not a positive thing for Swiss banks, but they are being squeezed by Uncle Sam. And Uncle wants more, and will be checking all transactions, how much your employer pays for your health care, how much is in your bank accounts and retirement accounts, what Internet sites you visit, who sends you emails or text messages, etc, etc. Be prepared for wealth taxes, means testing of all government benefits, tracking of your physical location for tax purposes, even higher sin taxes, and every trick they can think of to get moar money out of you.
I liked things better when the Swiss were still using "the fiche."
This made everything so much easier.
Bully for them.
Chances are good their gold is already in a Chinese vault just outside of Shanghai.
Karma come around, come around, come around.
The Swiss have shown their true colors , COWARDS. Maybe the Western men will stop at some point being such disgraces of themselves and rediscover their heritage. Countless have stood up to unjust government tyranny. MOLON LABE.
Y'know it'd probably be worth buying gold bullion simply to make all the form filling easier.
Way back in the old days, this excellent movie served as a wake up call to come out from the slumber of the corn flakes coma most Americans are stuck in.
The Money Masters full length movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H56FUHgqRNE
So various islands in the Caribbean and the Channel are next?
<crickets>
Is (was) it possible to open an account in someone else's name. Someone you wanted to get into trouble?
Bunch of fucking hypocrits, what about the tax dodging US banks and corporations! This is getting beyond crazy now, if there isn't a revolution within 5 years I'll be amazed. Evil bastards!