Swiss Banking Chief Attacks City Of London

by Jeremy Hetherington-Gore, Tax-News.com, London

17 March 2005

The president of the Swiss Bankers’ Association Pierre Mirabaud, in an interview on Monday called the City of London“a money-laundering paradise”.

In the interview with newspaper, “Berner Zeitung”, Mirabaud said that British trust law was the culprit, since it allows the settlors of a trust to remain anonymous, which Mr Mirabaud says amounts to a sort of banking secrecy of sorts.

The British Bankers’ Association, contacted by swissinfo, said it viewed Mirabaud's comments "with interest". "London has one of the best regulated banking sectors in the world,” said spokesman Brian Capon. "Banks have stringent and enforceable anti-money laundering procedures in place and regulators require banks to undertake detailed 'know your customer' checks for every customer," he added.

Mirabaud also said that exchanges of information between the British and authorities in other countries as a “farce”. “Any investigations [into wrongdoing] by the authorities are fruitless because the [British] banks do not really know their clients,” said Mirabaud. The opposite was true in Switzerland, he claimed.

Switzerland recently signed a set of agreements with the EU, known as 'Bilaterals II', under which information exchange will be considerably strengthened, and Switzerland will apply the EU's Savings Tax Directive via a withholding tax; but banking secrecy as such will remain in place despite the EU's best efforts to breach it. In polls, the Swiss repeatedly give their support to the maintenance of banking secrecy.

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