Translated material
They will take it!
The head of the German Ministry of Finance promised to eliminate banking secrecy
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble recently issued a verdict on the Swiss banking system. In response to the anger of Swiss political and banking circles in connection with the intention of the German authorities to purchase from an anonymous person a CD with data on the bank accounts of German citizens who evade taxes, Mr. Schäuble said in an interview with the Swiss Neue Zuericher Zeitung: “We are liquidating the banking secret in Europe." And Switzerland, which is not an EU country, in his personal conviction, will not escape this process, which “will not be easy for it.”As you know, the German Ministry of Finance was asked to buy data on the accounts of one and a half thousand Germans who had hidden money unaccounted for by the tax authorities in the banks of the Alpine Confederation, in particular in Credit Suise. The anonymous seller asked for 2.5 million euros for his goods. At the end of last week, an unequivocal decision was made in Berlin and most federal states - “we will take it.” Over the weekend, German tax investigators traveled to France to meet with the seller of Swiss bank secrecy. Financial detectives deliberately made contacts abroad, since in Germany itself, in their opinion, the seller of the CD could be arrested and his goods confiscated.
Meanwhile, it turned out that the purchase of the disc paid off even before it was completed. At the stage of national discussion of the idea of a possible gesheft, one tax fugitive from Berlin seemed to lose his nerve, and he went to confess to the tax and financial department at his place of residence. Officials took into account the Berliner's statement about a “mistake” made when declaring his income, and, without penalties or possible legal sanctions, decided that he must pay an additional 4.5 million euros. In other federal states of Germany, dozens of citizens made similar confessions, although the amount of return of fiscal arrears turned out to be much more modest there.
It is known that the mysterious bank data thief first made contact with the German tax authorities about a year ago. At first he sent an email with samples of the information contained on the disk. The detectives were unable to unambiguously identify the sender on their own, and they turned to the Federal Intelligence Service for help. But the intelligence service was unable to find out who was behind the proposal to buy information about German citizens evading taxes.
For German tax authorities, buying a CD should turn out to be the best deal in recent years. Analysts, however, suggest that due to the nature of the proposal, we are most likely talking about a computer specialist who hacked the bank's database and remained undetected. Credit Suisse management admitted in an official statement that the bank has no evidence that any information was stolen from the system. The vice-president of the Swiss Banking Union, Urs Roth, said the other day: “We have no evidence that this is specifically about Credit Suisse.” But, as he admitted, there is no absolute security; every system can be hacked. Credit Suisse is a large Swiss bank with 47 thousand employees, which has existed since 1856 and operates in 50 countries.
Meanwhile, the German-Swiss conflict goes beyond the scope of interstate diplomacy, developing into outright nationwide Germanophobia, which at the everyday level has always been characteristic of a significant part of the Swiss. This time we are not talking about “German arrogance”, guest workers from Germany or the endless flow of transit cars from our northern neighbor. Now we are talking about the holy of holies of Switzerland - banking secrecy. The liberal newspaper Tagesanzeiger asked its readers: “If you can buy bank data, then apparently you can torture people?”
The Germans in Switzerland are an old and sore point for the Alpine Confederation, where there have always been strong fears about the threat of “Germanization” of the country. In 2008, about 250 thousand immigrants from Germany lived here, the vast majority of highly qualified personnel with university education. In Zurich alone, 25 thousand Germans work, including decently earning doctors, lawyers and university professors.