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JULIUS BAER

Julius Bär hands 2,500 names to US: report

Swiss private bank Julius Bär handed over to US authorities information on 2,500 of its employees as part of Washington's efforts to clamp down on tax evasion, a newspaper reported on Friday.

Julius Bär hands 2,500 names to US: report
Sporst (File)

The Zurich-based bank is believed to be the latest to bend to Washington’s demands to release names of staff who could have helped clients avoid paying tax in the United States, Le Temps newspaper said.

In addition to providing personal information about staff to the US tax authorities, Baer is said to have made available personal documents, emails and details of telephone calls.

The data concerns current and former staff, as well as outside contractors, the report added.

It cites as its source lawyer Douglas Hornung, the legal representative of a former HSBC executive whose name was one of more than 1,000 given to the US tax office.

Referring to “three different sources” in his open letter to Swiss president Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Hornung writes that Bär “gave more than 2,500 dossiers to the US, and that HSBC had handed over approximately 1,100”, violating Switzerland’s federal law on data protection.

That brings the total number of names handed over by the 11 banks in Washington’s sights to 10,000, Hornung claims.

President Widmer-Schlumpf, who is also the country’s finance minister, recently announced that she hoped to come to a “global solution” on the issue “this year”.

The banks are: Credit Suisse, Julius Bär, Wegelin, Banque cantonale de Zurich (ZKB), la Banque cantonale de Bale (BKB), Neue Zürcher Bank (NZB), HSBC, LLB, in addition to the Israeli banks Leumi, Hapoalim and Mizrahi.

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NORWAY

Norway Uni pulls coronavirus message citing ‘poorly developed’ US health system

One of Norway's leading universities has been forced to change a message warning overseas students of the US's "poorly developed health services", after it was dragged into a storm of criticism on social media.

Norway Uni pulls coronavirus message citing 'poorly developed' US health system
Norwegian University of Science and Technology is one of Norway's leading universities. Photo: NTNU
Over the weekend, the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology posted a message on its Facebook page for its students on international postings,  advising them to heed the latest advice from Norway's foreign ministry on the coronavirus pandemic, and return back to Norway. 
 
“This applies especially,” the message said, “if you are staying in a country with poorly developed health services and infrastructure and/or collective infrastructure, for example the USA.” 
 
But on Monday, after a storm of social media criticism, the message was changed, stripping out all mention of the US. 
 
Anne Dahl, communications advisor for the university's rector, told state broadcaster NRK that the university had decided to change the post because the furore was distracting people from the serious underlying message. 
 
“We do not want the expression of a single phrase to overshadow important information, so the specific wording about the US was removed,” she wrote in an email. 
 
The original wording was quickly picked up by Twitter commentators in the US. 
 

It then got viral news coverage, with both conservative outlets like Fox News, and left-of-centre newspapers like the UK's Independent picking up the story. 
 
Several people flocked to the original post to attack the university in the comments. 
 
 
 
 
The post was then changed on Monday to remove all reference to the US. 
 
 
 
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