Sunday, August 30, 2009

France gets Swiss banking details

From the Guardian:

"France announced it had received the details of thousands of people suspected of evading taxes in undeclared accounts."

The FT explained:

"a list of 3,000 citizens holding some €3bn in Swiss bank accounts . . . The government said two banks operating in France had volunteered most of the information on the 3,000 account holders, while the rest came from its own tax investigation."

(unfortunately, if you scroll down you will find that this FT journalist, like so many others, still doesn't understand the meaning of the word "competitive".)

This follows the US' activism against UBS, Germany's activism on getting information out of Liechtenstein, some apparent interest from Canada, some changes in Portugal, and, surprise surprise, no serious efforts from Britain, at least as far as we can see (and this one, as the blog explains, doesn't make the cut.)

The original interview with the French budget minister Eric Woerth, in French, is here (with a rough English translation here.) Let's hope they run with this as far as it will go.

These French, German and US actions are all most welcome - but still a pale shadow of what is really needed.

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