Liechtenstein And Austrian Ministers Meet To Discuss Money Laundering

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

05 December 2001

According to a report in the Liechtensteiner Vaterland this week, Minister of Justice Rita Kieber-Beck has paid an official visit to her Austrian counterpart, Dr Dieter Bohmdorfer in order to discuss money laundering and banking secrecy issues.

'We must do all we can in order to dry out the financial sources of terrorism,' she said in Vienna. Ms Kieber-Beck was accompanied by the Deputy Head of the principality's Legal Department, Marion Frick-Tabarelli, and also by Robert Wallner, the Chief Prosecutor.

Although the issue of money laundering and the disruption of terrorist financing is under examination pretty much all over the world at the moment, any discussion of banking secrecy changes between these two countries is likely to raise hopeful eyebrows within the European Union.

In a long running EU debate over information exchange regarding foreign savings interest reporting, several member countries, among them Austria and Luxembourg, have stressed that they will only accept the EU regulation if countries such as Switzerland, the United States, and Liechtenstein (all non-members) adopt similar information sharing procedures.

However, speaking last week, the Minister of Justice for Liechtenstein was keen to separate the issues of terrorist financing and legitimate banking secrecy. 'In Liechtenstein there is no banking secrecy in case of money laundering and terrorism and it has not existed in the past,' she explained.

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