Darling's dig at Swiss banking 'secrecy'
Swiss banks must remove the veil of secrecy around their tax and banking regimes, according to Alistair Darling
Switzerland must end its ‘intolerable’ tax and banking secrecy, said
chancellor Alistair Darling.
Darling told the
Observer
that Switzerland must make its banking and tax regimes more transparent to bring
into in line with the rest of Europe.
‘I think it’s important there is transparency. People don’t know what’s going
on. That’s not good. Indeed, half the many problems we have got now is because
people didn’t know what was going on,’ said Darling.
‘It’s one of the things Switzerland has got to address. If it wants to be
part of the international community, it’s got to be open. The secrecy that
allows people to shelter their wealth from tax that’s properly paid – you can’t
tolerate that. It’s unfair to those people who have got no choice but to pay.’
The US taxman is pushing Swiss wealth management firm UBS to reveal details
of US account holders who it alleges have withheld tax from the Internal Revenue
Service, according to
reports.
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