Eichel's Anti-Money Laundering Measures Come Under Attack

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

09 October 2001

The German Finance Minister's proposal to introduce a central register of all bank accounts held in Germany has come under fire from tax experts and data protection groups, who feel that Hans Eichel is exploiting the current international climate to fight domestic tax evasion, regardless of civil liberties implications.

Although on Friday Mr Eichel described tax evasion as a practice that hurts everyone, he agreed that it would be wrong to chase German tax criminals under the 'false flag' of terrorism, and said that it had not been decided whether the new central register would be used for any purpose other than the elimination of terrorist money laundering.

However, German tax experts and civil liberties groups were not reassured by this, and argued that the registration of approximately 300 million bank accounts by the country's banking supervisor, BaKred, would allow investigating authorities to conduct 'sweep searches', a practice which has always been difficult in the past because of the fragmented nature of the German banking system, and the emphasis on state, as opposed to federal regulation.

'Eichel is shooting well beyond his target,' President of the German association of tax consultants, Jurgen Pinne, told a German newspaper on Sunday. And elsewhere, critics were vocal, calling on Mr Eichel to explain why such measures, which had always been viewed as unacceptable by the government, were now necessary.

Also included in the package designed to 'dry up the streams that finance terrorism' were proposals for the establishment of a new financial intelligence unit within the federal finance ministry.

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