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| Posted: 13 Mar 2009 20:54 | ||
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Administrator Currently Offline |
Posts: 563 Join Date: Dec 2008 |
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Switzerland, the world's largest offshore financial centre, has agreed to accept concessions on bank secrecy.
However, while it will now abide by international rules on bank data sharing, it said it would only respond to "concrete and justified" requests. The government added that it would still protect banking customers from "unjustified watching from abroad". Switzerland's announcement comes after it had risked being added to a global blacklist of uncooperative tax havens. It is estimated that Switzerland's banks hold $2 trillion (£1.4tn) of global wealth held abroad. OECD talks It reached its agreement overnight with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which sets rules on the sharing of bank data to try and crack down on offshore tax evasion. This is the first time it has agreed to sign up to the OECD rules, having previously stated that it would compromise its long-standing banking secrecy principles. Andorra, Liechtenstein, Austria and Luxembourg have also just agreed to sign up to the OECD rules. All had come under increasing pressure to reform their banking sectors. Andorra and Liechtenstein, along with Monaco, are currently on the OECD blacklist of "uncooperative tax havens". |
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