Bloomberg: Defacto Abolishment of Swiss Banking Secrecy

[TWiley]

March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Ever since UBS AG handed over the names of about 300 customers to the U.S. on Feb. 18, there’s been nothing but shuddering from Zurich’s Paradeplatz to Geneva’s quartier des banques.
The decision marked the first time Switzerland lifted its banking secrecy laws, allowing UBS to pass on client data to avoid U.S. criminal charges. In the past two weeks, Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz said he’s willing to collect taxes on offshore accounts for the U.S., and Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf offered cooperation on some cases of tax evasion.

“That’s de facto abolishing banking secrecy,” said Regula Staempfli, a Swiss political scientist in Brussels who lectures at universities in Germany, France and Switzerland about European and Swiss political decision making. “Having broken the rule of law, we have no ground to refuse Brussels what we’ve given Washington.”
Full Story: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a8TMsOqV2lO4&refer=home

Senator Levin has them on the run (from today’s email)

<snip>

I joined members of both houses of Congress to introduce the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act. Offshore tax abuses -- in which individuals and corporations take advantage of loopholes in the law to avoid paying their fair share of taxes -- cost the U.S. Treasury $100 billion each year. Our bill will help shut these tax abuses down.

Click here to read a recent Wall Street Journal article on this legislation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123613750507826203.html

Protecting taxpayers -- from cost overruns and from tax cheats -- has wide bipartisan support, and I am hopeful that we will be able to pass both of these bills this year.

This week, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, both of which I chair, held hearings on these bills. I will keep in touch as our work continues.

Sincerely,
Senator Carl Levin

Senator Levin is going after those "Illegal Americans" Go Carl !