Facing flak from India and others for acting as a safe haven to foreigners stowing away wealth, Swiss banks have said they will share account details of suspected money launderers if the request is supported by four specific details. The specific details that someone requesting information should provide are the identity of the suspected offenders, details of the alleged offence, along with facts to undermine the suspicion, name of the bank and branch concerned in Switzerland and a written request from the foreign country’s tax authority.
India is believed to have completed talks with Switzerland to amend their bilateral tax treaty, which would pave the way for authorities here to seek details of illicit wealth stashed away by Indians in Swiss banks.
Having made it clear earlier that it won’t encourage “fishing expeditions” by any country, Swiss banks have also said that account details would not be exchanged automatically and would be shared with foreign countries only under their taxation agreements.
Switzerland-based banks’ apex body, the influential Swiss Bankers Association (SBA), has listed out the set of conditions for providing bank account details to other countries in its latest ‘compendium’ on the Swiss banking sector being distributed to various stakeholders.
The 2010 edition of the Compendium, which is an updated version of its last edition published in 2006, is “intended above all for readers outside the industry who seek to gain a general understanding of the banking sector,” SBA said.
Switzerland is revising tax treaties with various countries, including India, as per an international model agreement on double taxation, which governs the exchange of information, or mutual administrative assistance among the tax authorities of the signatory countries.
In its latest Compendium, SBA has said that the banks’ client confidentiality would still remain safeguarded and “administrative assistance” would be given only in isolated cases and the practice known as “fishing expeditions,” where countries seek to flip through multiple accounts in the hope of finding incriminating evidence, is yet not permitted.
SBA has further said that “administrative assistance” would be provided subject to certain conditions.
“The foreign tax authority has to submit a request in writing, stating an adequately reasonable suspicion,” the first condition says. The second makes it mandatory for the request to “contain a specific reference to the identity of the person liable to tax”.
The other two conditions says that “the facts of the tax evasion case have to be adequately described (and), the bank or branch concerned has to be specified.”
The issue of secret Swiss bank accounts is a political hot potato and a poll plank during last year’s general elections.
PTI
