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TAX EVASION

Swiss bank denies French pols are clients

Geneva-based bank Reyl et Company, under investigation in France for assisting in tax fraud, on Thursday denied media allegations of an organized laundering operation, and insisted it counted no former or current French politicians among its clients.

Swiss bank denies French pols are clients
Former Reyl & Company banker Pierre Condamin-Gerbier. Photo: Bertrand Guay/AFP

The bank, which is heavily implicated in a scandal surrounding former budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac, stressed that it "has no French resident holding or having held political duties in France among its clients."

Cahuzac resigned in disgrace in March over an undeclared foreign bank account said to contain around €600,000 ($770,000).

He is facing charges of tax fraud, while his wife Patricia Cahuzac was also taken into custody this week and questioned by anti-fraud police before being freed Thursday, a source close to the investigation said.

Cahuzac's account is believed to have resided for a time with Reyl before the bank in 2009 helped Cahuzac transfer the funds to Singapore to avoid detection by French tax authorities.

A former official with the bank, Pierre Condamin-Gerbier, who has claimed to know of 15 French politicians and "big names" with undeclared bank accounts in Switzerland, said Wednesday he had handed the information over to French investigators.

Condamin-Gerbier has worked for several other Swiss financial institutions and he did not specifically link the politicians with the Reyl bank.

However, according to news reports, he also provided detailed accounts of how the bank helped rich French entrepreneur Alexandre Allard, who had been living abroad, to minimize his fortune of several hundreds of millions of dollars when he brought it back to France in a bid to dodge taxes.

"The Reyl Group would like to formally deny all of the allegations against it of an accusatory nature published by French and Swiss media over the past 48 hours," the bank said in a statement, without providing further details.

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TAX EVASION

Switzerland’s banks remain among the world’s most secretive

Despite the progress made over the years, the Swiss financial sector continues to be one of the least transparent in the world. But there is good news too.

Switzerland’s banks remain among the world’s most secretive
Switzerland remains one of the world's least transparent nations. Photo AFP

Switzerland is in the third place in the 2020 Financial Secrecy Index released by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Tax Justice Network (TJN), which rates 133 nations based on their financial transparency.

Two other European countries, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, are also ranked among the top 10 least transparent nations on the TJN’s list.

Despite being in the third place, Switzerland ranks better this year than it did in the previous edition of the Index, which is released every two years — it slipped from the first to third place. The Cayman Islands and the United States took the first and second spots, respectively.

Switzerland reduced its risk of being an offshore haven for tax cheats by 12 percent, “finally improving enough to move off the top of the index”, TJN said. 

READ MORE: Switzerland's strangest taxes – and what happens if you don't pay them

This improvement is mainly due to Switzerland extending its international network for the automatic exchange of customer information to more than 100 countries. 

Also, in a referendum held last year, Swiss voters accepted the Federal Act on Tax Reform and AVS Financing (TRAF). This legislation introduced major changes in the Swiss tax system by ending some preferential tax schemes and replacing them with new regulations which are in line with international standards.

This tax reform prompted the European Union to change Switzerland's status from ‘tax haven' to one which is EU-compliant, removing strict controls on transactions within the EU. 

So why, despite all the reforms, does Switzerland still rank among the world’s least transparent nations?

According to a Swiss NGO Alliance Sud, wealthy people from poor countries can still hide their money here from the tax authorities of their home nations.

Alliance Sud noted that despite the progress made in the past years by Swiss financial institutions, “the fight against tax evasion remains insufficient”.

Switzerland is the world’s biggest centre for managing offshore wealth, with a quarter of global assets invested here.

For years, it has been placed on various lists of tax havens where wealthy foreigners could park their money. Faced with widespread criticism for this practice, Switzerland passed an anti-money laundering law in 1997 and introduced strict regulations against tax evasion.
 

 

 
 

 

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