Just say No to the Swiss president

Will Rogers once quipped that income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. We now know that Switzerland played a major part in this process.

What is it about Swiss bankers? The Board of UBS has been caught with their collective trousers around their ankles, but they remain oblivious to the fact that their actions are unacceptable to ordinary citizens.

In the latest twist to a very sordid tale, the Swiss president has tried to get UBS off the hook by offering a dirty deal to the USA administration. Drop the legal actions against UBS, he says, and we'll make it easier to negotiate a new bilateral tax treaty for information exchange. Err, excuse me, this is not the moment to be coming forward with spivvy deals that look to the ordinary citizen like an offer from the mafia. Especially not when the offer relates to weak and ineffective information exchange requiring legal processes for requesting details about tax evading citizens.

UBS has already admitted that its banking officers were engaged in soliciting illicit business in the USA. They were doing this on an industrial scale, and they acted with the full knowledge of the bank's Board. What they did amounted to nothing less than a conspiracy against the interests of ordinary US citizens. For this they deserve not just a hefty fine but also to lose their banking licence. We expect nothing less.

And as for the dodgy deal on offer from the Swiss president, we fully concur with the New York Times' latest editorial:

We understand that the Swiss government is worried about the future of its biggest bank, in which it recently sunk taxpayer money. We welcome its newfound openness — however reluctantly given. But the United States need not condone the illegal tax evasion of the past for a shot at stopping illegal tax evasion in the future. The Obama administration should, politely, say no.