Showing posts with label Swiss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swiss. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 August 2021
Tuesday, 9 October 2018
Whistleblower Rudolf Elmer on Why a Court Ruling Could Finally Topple Swiss Banking Secrecy
Rudolf Elmer in The Wire.In
Editor’s Note: For nearly 14 years, Rudolf Elmer has tried to chip away at the principle of Swiss banking secrecy, which laid the groundwork for an international system that helped the world’s rich and multinational conglomerates evade billions of dollars in taxes through offshore financial structures and tax havens.
Elmer was the Chief Operating Officer of the Caribbean operations of the Swiss bank, Julius Baer, for eight years before being dismissed in 2002. He was, as The Wire has noted in a 2017 interview, was part of the first wave of Swiss bank whistleblowers who helped expose the inner workings of a patently unjust system.
In 2011, he was tried for sharing information about tax evasion, money laundering and other financial violations with Swiss t0ax authorities and Swiss newspapers.
In 2014 he was tried for sharing information with US, German tax authorities and WikiLeaks. While it’s unclear if the Americans made use of Elmer’s data, in early 2016, Julius Baer coughed up $547 million in fines after the Obama administration filed criminal charges against the bank. The German government went onto levy another EUR 50 million penalty. Both fines were paid instantly in order to avoid prosecution.
Elmer’s crusade has taken a personal toll as well. Due to multiple cases, he has been imprisoned for over 220 days, most of it solitary confinement, and has had to fend off an orchestrated harassment campaign against his family.
In 2016, he won a partial victory in the high court of Zurich, which turned down demands by the prosecution to convict the 63-year-old of breaching Swiss banking secrecy laws, but upheld other less minor charges.
On October 10, 2018, in response to appeals filed by both Elmer and the prosecutor’s office, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland will take a final call. Elmer, whose as-of-yet-unpublished data also contains the offshore secrets of 20 ultra-high-networth Indian clients, writes below on what’s at stake.
In my view as the accused person, the essence of this highly political and crucial case for Switzerland’s finance industry is if the much-vaunted principle of Swiss bank secrecy can be applied extra-territorially.
In this case, whether the banking secrecy can be applied to entities that operate in the Cayman Islands.
In the Cayman Islands, the Julius Baer Trust Company Ltd. (Cayman) administered trusts, companies, equity- and debt-funds but also hedge funds on a big scale. Some of those special purpose vehicles held Swiss bank accounts with Bank Julius Baer & Co. AG, Zürich in Switzerland.
The statements and other advices associated with those Swiss bank accounts were regularly sent to the Cayman Islands in order to perform administrative tasks for the accounts of those special purpose vehicles.
It is because of these Swiss bank accounts that “Causa Elmer” (Case Elmer) has turned into a “Causa Swiss Bank Secrecy” (Case Swiss Bank Secrecy). It particularly focuses on its future, because the crucial question is if Swiss bank secrecy can protect client data outside Switzerland.
In 2011, when I was in solitary confinement for 220 days, a famous Swiss lawyer wrote me a letter that explains my predicament nicely:
This also tells me why the entire legal case, which was opened under dubious circumstances in 2005, has been investigated and re-investigated several times.
The judges of the Higher Court of Zurich acted even as a supervisor of the Prosecution Office and provided guidance. A materially changed indictment was issued in 2013, roughly 70 court rulings were issued during the 14 years of investigation and close to 40 interrogations were performed.
My lawyer, Ganden Tethong, has over 180 binders filled with court documents. In addition to this, I underwent two forensic psychological evaluations.
To top it off, my wife was accused of having violated Swiss bank secrecy – a tactic I believe was carried out to make sure she was not allowed to visit me during my time in solitary confinement.
I had to review 8 million computer files under the supervision of a police officer within three months in order to find evidence to justify my actions. The stress caused by the cases against me sent me to the hospital for three months, where I recovered but then was forced on December 10, 2014 (incidentally, World Human Rights Day) to attend a court trial where I had a second serious collapse within two days and was hospitalised again.
This has had a toll on my eleven year old daughter, who attempted to commit suicide, but was able to be rescued by a bunch of brilliant doctors. Family photographs, her computers, her play-machine her first story writings and other parts of her belongings are still confiscated by Swiss authorities.
In short, astronomical effort bordering on psychological warfare has been performed in order to make the scapegoat for the difficult times that Swiss bank secrecy has been exposed to in the last few years.
The Swiss media has not been helpful to say in the least. Various publications have called me a thief, a blackmailer, a psychologically sick person, a terrorist, neo-Nazi and caused irreversible reputational damage. One newspaper, Die Weltwoche a right-wing magazine, was later found guilty in three court trials of violating my personal rights.
However, as a former Swiss army captain of the Air Force, one knows the methodology by which people are mentally destroyed. One also knows how to defend oneself in such circumstances.
“Causa Elmer”, therefore, has turned into a “Causa Swiss bank secrecy”.
This was clear to me from when a well-known Geneva-based banker stated in 2007 to Professor Jean Ziegler that Julius Baer should make Elmer an offer of hush money of CHF 10 million or so to be silenced and to agree to close the pending legal case which threatens the entire Swiss banking industry as a whole.
The filing of the complaint by Bank Julius Baer & Co. AG, Zurich was a big management mistake. This case should have been solved with a cordial or gentlemen agreement which was common in Switzerland in those days.
On October 10, 2018, the five judges of the Federal Court of Switzerland will present their view and their rulings based on the governing law of Switzerland which currently requests a Swiss banker to be under Swiss bank secrecy law if he/she holds an employment contract with a bank that is domiciled in Switzerland and holds a Swiss banking license.
Julius Baer Bank & Trust Company Ltd., Cayman Islands is neither domiciled in Switzerland and does not have a Swiss banking licence. During the time of my employment, from 1994 to 2002, I held a Cayman employment contract with the sister entity of Julius Baer Bank & Co. AG, Zurich and had no reporting requirements to fulfill to the Swiss bank at all.
Therefore, according to leading Swiss legal experts, Swiss bank secrecy cannot be applied in my case.
The agreement with Bank Julius Baer & Co. AG, Zurich in respect of pension matters is by far not a Swiss employment contract because most of the key elements of an employment contract are missing. Besides this, for the very same time period, there was the true Cayman employment contract applicable. It appears that the true employment contracts were kept deliberately as long as possible out of the court files.
Only when two well-known legal professors, Mark Piet and Thomas Geiser, gave a second opinion to the courts, the judges of the Higher Court of Zurich were mostly forced to issue an acquittal in my case for charges related to violation of Swiss bank secrecy laws.
What is at stake?
The present causa of Swiss bank secrecy must be keeping the Swiss banking industry’s biggest clients on their toes.
Why? Because ultra high networth individuals all over the world and even multinational conglomerates, who use special purpose vehicles administered by Swiss banks holding a Swiss bank account, will be very keen on knowing the outcome of the Federal Court ruling.
Here are the questions at stake:
First, is it a fact that Swiss bank secrecy ends at the boundary of Switzerland?
Second, what happens to a client’s offshore structure (trusts, companies etc.) if it holds a Swiss bank account? Or put another way, how is it protected outside Switzerland?
Third, it is known that Swiss banks have outsourced accounting administration to so called low-costs countries such as Poland and therefore the question is how and under which law is my data protected if it is outside Switzerland in a so-called out-sourcing centre?
Fourth, in confirming the partial acquittal granted to me by the high court in 2016, with regard to violating Swiss bank secrecy, could this allow future and potential whistleblowers to come forward and make even more offshore data public?
Considering all of this, the Federal Court of Switzerland one or the other way will come up with an important verdict not only for me but for the future of Swiss Bank secrecy and the Swiss Banking industry.
The entire case is one for the history books, dealing as it does with one of the world’s best known secrecy laws. The outcome of the court ruling could also cause big change in the Swiss Banking industry as it puts a spotlight on questions that very few people in Switzerland’s financial industry have raised or want answered.
Monday, 9 February 2015
Top 100 HSBC account holders with Indian addresses
Here is the full #swissleaks list
1. UTTAMCHANDANI GOPALDAS WADHUMAL/family $54,573,535
2. MEHTA RIHAN HARSHAD/ family $53,631,788
3. THARANI MAHESH THIKAMDAS $40,615,288
4. GUPTA SHRAVAN $32,398,796
5. KOTHARI BHADRASHYAM HARSHAD/ family $31,555,874
6. SHAUNAK JITENDRA PARIKH/family $30,137,608
7. TANDON SANDEEP $26,838,488
8. AMBANI MUKESH DHIRUBHAI $26,654,991
9. AMBANI ANIL $26,654,991
10. KRISHNA BHAGWAN RAMCHAND $23,853,117
11. DOST PARIMAL PAL SINGH $21,110,345
12. GOYAL NARESH KUMAR $18,716,015
13. MEHTA RAVICHANDRA VADILAL $18,250,253
14. PATEL KANUBHAI ASHABHAI $16,059,129
15. SACHIV RAJESH MEHTA $12,341,074
16. ANURAG DALMIA/family $9,609,371
17. RAVICHANDRAN MEHTA BALKRISHNA $8,757,113
18. KUMUDCHANDRA SHANTILAL MEHTA/family $8,450,703
19. PATEL RAJESHKUMAR GOVINDLAL/family $6,908,661
20. HEMANT DHIRAJ $6,237,932
21. ANUP MEHTA/family $5,976,998
22. TANDON ANNU $5,728,042
23. SIDHARTH BURMAN $5,401,579
24. SALGOACAR DIPTI DATTARAJ $5,178,668
25. DABRIWALA SURBHIT/family $5,000,000
26. VAGHELA BALWANTKUMAR DULLABHAI $4,405,465
27. DILIPKUMAR DALPATLAL MEHTA $4,255,230
28. KULDIP & GURBACHAN SINGH DHINGRA $4,144,256
29. LAKHANI JAMNA THAKURDAS $4,123,673
30. RAJIV GUPTA $4,113,705
31. SAWHNEY ARMINDER SINGH $3,965,881
32. ISRANI LOVEEN GURUMUKHDAS $3,824,104
33. NATVARLAL BHIMBHAI DESAI/family $3,746,078
34. TULSIANI JAWAHARLAL GULABRAI/family $3,730,145
35. GUPTA RAJIV $3,545,416
36. JAISWAL LADLI PERSHAD $3,496,063
37. CARVAHLO ALOYSIUS JOSEPH $3,313,788
38. PRADIP BURMAN $3,199,875
39. TULSIANI SHAM GULABRAI/family $3,066,991
40. VITHALDAS JANAKI KISHORE $3,031,220
41. KUMAR VENU RAMAN $3,063,064
42. THAKKAR DILIP JAYANTILAL $2,989,534
43. TULSIANI PARTAB GULABRAI $2,901,435
44. ADENWALLA DHUN DORAB/family $2,863,271
45. BURMAN PRADIP $2,831,238
46. TULSIANI NARAINDAS GULBARI $2,818,300
47. DASOT PRAVEEN $2,801,634
48. PATEL LALITABEN CHIMANBHAI $2,741,488
49. CHATHA JOGINDER SINGH $2,732,838
50. SHYAM PRASAD MURARKA $2,546,516
51. DHURVENDRA PRAKASH GOEL $2,488,239
52. NANDA SURESH/family $2,303,713
53. GIDWANI ANAN NELUM $2,228,582
54. PRATAP CHHAGANLAL JOISHER/family $2,209,346
55. MEHTA DEVAUNSHI ANOOP $2,136,830
56. SHAW MOHAMMAD HASEEB/family $2,133,581
57. AHMED rizwan syed/family $2,125,644
58. VINITA SUNIL CHUGANI $2,085,158
59. SAWNEY BHUSHAN LAL $2,043,474
60. PARMINDER SINGH KALRA $2,042,180
61. CHOWDHURY RATAN SINGH $1,987,504
62. DHIRANI VIKRAM $1,915,148
63. NANDA SARDARILAL MATHRADAS $1,824,849
64. WILKINSON MARTHA $1,824,717
65. SAHNEY DEVINDER SINGH $1,763,835
66. TANEJA DHARAM VIR $1,748,541
67. DHINDSA KOMAL $1,597,425
68. CHATWANI TRIKAMJI/family $1,594,114
69. PITTIE MADHUSUDANLAL NARAYANLAL $1,462,594
70. BHARDWAJ ANIL $1,435,781
71. DIPENDU BAPALAL SHAH $1,362,441
72. BHARTIA ALOK $1,349,044
73. SINGH SHUBHA SUNIL $1,348,983
74. DANSINGHANI SHEWAK JIVATSING/family $1,267,743
75. KUMAR DAVINDER/family $1,231,088
76. JASDANWALLA ARSHAD HUSAIN ADAMSI/family $1,229,723
77. JHAVERI HARISH SHANTICHAND/ family $1,191,144
78. SINGHVI GANPAT $1,194,388
79. MILAN MEHTA/family $1,153,957
80. TUKSIANI ASHOK GULABRAI $1,140,890
81. MODI KRISHAN KUMAR $1,139,967
82. GARODIA BISHWANATH $1,071,858
83. JAGASIA ANURADHA ANIL $1,039,648
84. VITHALDAS KISHORE/family $1,020,028
85. CHANDRASHEKAR KADIRVELU BABU/family $1,007,357
86. GALANI DIPAK VARANDMA/family $940,191
87. SAWHNEY ARUN RAVINDRANATH $914,698
88. MERWAH CHANDER MOHAN $909,309
89. PATEL ATUL THAKORBHAI $813,295
90. NATHANI KUMAR SATURGUN $751,747
91. SATHE SUBHASH/family $749,370
92. SHAH ANIL PANNALAL/family $742,187
93. MADHIOK ROMESH $719,559
94. BHAVEN PREMATLAL JHAVERI $717,654
95. KINARIWALA KALPESH HARSHAD $713,340
96. GOKAL BHAVESH RAVINDRA $699,184
97. LAMBA SANJIV $644,923
98. SHOBHA BHARAT KUMAR ASHER $641,387
99. KATHORIA RAKESH KUMAR $589,753
100. BHANSALI ALKESH PRATAP CHANDRA $579,609
Wednesday, 9 October 2013
Subramanyam Swamy Speaks
Subramanian Swamy talks on Islam
Some details on Dar al Harb can be found here:
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Dar_al-Harb
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
If bankers leave the country, it would be no loss
Ignore their howls of protest.
They took home unheard of sums. Only in Britain do ministers dance to their tune. But public fury cannot be defied for ever
Illustration by Belle Mellor
The peasants are revolting across Europe. They want bankers' blood and mean to get it. Until now, public response to the credit crunch has been one of general bafflement and wrist-slapping. The banks persuaded the world it was all an act of fate. As it was, they were too big to fail and their leaders too saintly to atone for it. For four years, British banks were showered with nearly half a trillion pounds of public and printed money. They duly recovered and stayed rich, while everyone else went poor.
The worm has turned. The banks and government alike have failed to deliver recovery. The people want revenge, and have found it – of all places – in the European parliament. It has declared that EU bankers cannot get bonuses bigger than their salaries, or twice as big if shareholders approve. This applies wherever EU bankers work, and to any overseas banker working in the EU.
Meanwhile, a Swiss referendum now requires top executives to seek explicit shareholder approval for their pay, with a ban on golden hellos and goodbyes. The Netherlands is talking of a tighter 20% cap on bonuses. Even laissez-faire Britain has seen the National Association of Pension Funds demand that boards keep executive pay rises down to inflation.
Europe's once omnipotent banking lobby has been all but neutered by the scale of scandal. The German government caved in to the EU parliament under pressure from the opposition Social Democrats. This was after the Libor scandal revealed Deutsche Bank cutting one trader's bonus by £34m, thus implying a staggering original sum. The Swiss campaign was kicked into life by the drugs firm Novartis giving its departing chairman a $76m gift. Some 68% of Swiss voted for the new curb.
Only in Britain do ministers still dance to the bankers' tune. Last month RBS executives brushed aside their state shareholder and paid themselves £600m in bonuses after posting a £5bn loss. Loss-making Lloyds dipped into its till and gave senior staff an extra £365m. Money-laundering HSBC announced 78 of its London executives would take home more than £1m each. They all say bonuses were unrelated to fines or losses, but they always say that. George Osborne was humiliated in Brussels on Tuesday by having to plead their fruitless cause.
Last year the City of London's much-heralded "shareholder spring" got nowhere. Revolts against executive pay at WPP, Barclays, Trinity Mirror and elsewhere had little noticeable impact. While overall pay stagnated, that of top executives rose 12%. Opinion polls showed the public overwhelmingly hostile to top pay. Only the government and the London mayor stand between the very rich and a furious public. The peasants' revolt means that even British ministers cannot defy opinion for ever.
The reality is that the banking community has allowed this thirst for revenge to build up for over four years, and it just did not care. Ever since the 1980s and financial deregulation, the profession took home sums of money unheard of in any other line of work.
This had nothing to do with free markets, except within a tight group of high-rolling traders. Modern bankers derive "economic rent" from exploiting oligopolistic cartels in financial services, with shareholders kept at one remove. The astronomical traders' bonuses are asymmetric returns on cash that properly belongs to depositors and shareholders whose money bears the risk. In any other business such bonuses would be regarded as theft from the firm.
For four years the British government – Labour and the coalition – huffed and puffed but was too terrified of the banks to act. Regulators were suborned by lobbyists and ministers, their offices packed with seconded bankers, and did as they were told. They gave huge sums to the banks in the belief that this was benefiting the demand economy. In Britain, some £400bn of cash was "pumped into the economy" via the banks. They merely traded or hoarded it, to their ever greater enrichment. The money vanished. A thousand pounds handed to every British citizen would have had more impact on the economy.
Last year, as if learning nothing, the Treasury gave the banks another £80bn to boost business and mortgage lending. This week it was predictably revealed that lending to small businesses actually fell as result. It was like giving money to a drunk and telling him to support his children. Never in the history of money can policy have been so glaringly inept. The banks laughed.
No trade unions are fiercer in defending their interests than the rich professions. As we saw this week with lawyers, cut their largesse and they threaten to take it out on the poor, the economy, the government, everyone. The banks howl that the bonus cap means their greed will go "offshore". This seems exaggerated. But the EU curbs could possibly see the start of the high-rollers moving out of over-regulated Europe towards the Americas and Asia.
This would not be wholly good news for Britain: finance has been the boom industry of the past quarter-century. But more likely is that the more toxic activities will go, and that is no loss. Either way, the banks have themselves to blame. They flew their golden wings too near the sun, and rage has melted them. They have only one plea on their side. The culture of greed in the City was nothing to the culture of ineptitude at the Bank of England and the Treasury. They pumped out the money. Never in British economic history can so much have been so wasted on so fruitless a cause. And still no hint of remorse.
Friday, 12 August 2011
German tax dodgers with money hidden in Swiss banks can sleep easy tonight.
Germany has set back the fight against tax evasion
Those who squirrel away undeclared wealth in Switzerland will be pleased by this deal. What's worse, the UK may follow suit
'Germany is setting back years of work towards the global prize of ending banking secrecy in the world's most pervasive tax haven.' Photograph: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters/Corbis
German tax dodgers with money hidden in Swiss banks can sleep easy tonight. For the German government this week initialled a beggar-thy-neighbour deal that undermines years of diplomatic work to penetrate Switzerland's globally corrosive banking secrecy. The agreement, which is due to be signed by both governments over the next few weeks, sees Germany accepting a paltry $2.8bn upfront from the Swiss banks said to hold some $276bn of Germans' undeclared wealth .
In addition, the deal says that Germans will in future be taxed at 26% on the income from their Alpine accounts – money the Swiss authorities will then hand over to Germany. But the Germans with secret accounts will not be forced to tell the taxman that they are hiding their wealth abroad. Their identities will remain secret, allowing Swiss bankers to keep their boasts about "privacy" and "confidentiality".
Both governments are spinning their agreement as a huge success for international co-operation and the fight against tax evasion.
In fact, Germany is setting back years of work towards the global prize of ending banking secrecy in the world's most pervasive tax haven. It has dealt a serious blow to prospects for automatic, multilateral exchange of tax-related information between governments, which is the gold standard for deterring tax dodging.
German Tax Justice Campaigners are hoping the deal with Switzerland can be repealed. But what about the scores of countries without the economic and political clout to negotiate such agreements with Switzerland? How are they to capture some of the billions they are haemorrhaging as a result of tax dodging and corruption?
They are reliant on the kind on international co-operation that NGOs including Christian Aid are fighting for, in order to End Tax Haven Secrecy. There may be worse to come. Here in the UK, HM Treasury is negotiating a similar agreement with Switzerland. It has simply been biding its time to see what kind of deal Germany gets.
With the UK government pursuing such a self-interested and myopic policy, it is no surprise that senior UK diplomats appear distinctly disinterested in playing ball at the G20, where a truly global deal to end tax haven secrecy could be brokered.
A former senior US Treasury official, who used to negotiate tax treaties for the US, recently told me of his fury about how these dirty deals are undoing a whole career's worth of work against financial secrecy.
Such is the scourge of tax havens that the Tax Justice Network estimate assets held offshore total $11.5tn – which if taxed could yield revenues in excess of $225bn. This is money that could be paying for schools, hospitals, university fees and so on – not only in the developed world but also in developing countries. It is $11.5tn that could be used productively in the global economy rather than stashed away in an Alpine tax haven for private gain.
Meanwhile, the real Swiss economy doesn't seem to be benefiting too much from the influx of dodgy capital. Its government this week met for a third unscheduled session to grapple with curbing the surging value of the Swiss franc, which is damaging Swiss exports and sending the economy down a precarious path.
Yet again, it is vested interests who are winning out over the real economy and the everyday citizens who are being deprived of essential services, whether in Basel, Berlin or Bamako.
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