Swiss role.....

I have some updated information on one of my favourite topics, the hypocrisy of the debate on ‘tax havens’.

I have previously dealt with the source of the vast amount of moolah that gets squirreled away. So where does it all go?

Here are the top five destinations:

1.   Switzerland (surprise, surprise): $2 trn (27% of total).

2.   UK and Channel Islands: $1.8 trn.

3.   Caribbean: $0.8 trn.

4.   USA: $0.7 trn.  (Please try to keep up, you Yanks).

5.   Luxembourg: $0.6 trn – where the hell do they keep it in that tiddly little nowhere-place?

And which countries are the star contributors? Figures from another source suggest that Swiss deposits are even larger than those above.

Here are the top five:

1.   India, would you believe, with $1.5 trn of Swiss deposits alone, which is 10 times India’s foreign debt.

2.   Russia: $470 bn.

3.   UK: $390 bn.

4.   Ukraine: $100 bn.

5.   China: $96 bn*.

I previously poured scorn on the US and UK posturing about ‘Swiss bank accounts’ (good tub thumping stuff in this ‘bash the bankers’ climate). What I said was that the deal whereby the Swiss had agreed to something vaguely like disclosure after an 18 months lead-in was nonsense. In 18 months, all private depositors who were foolish enough to open off-shore accounts in their own names would have long since departed to Panama or Singapore or some other customer-friendly destination. Most accounts are anonymous trusts, shell companies or other special purpose vehicles that have no audit trail.

In any case, Americans have no need to resort to Switzerland when they can stash the cash in a shell company in Nevada where any disclosure is against state law and interest-earnings are tax-free.

So can we take seriously the populist polemics of politicians who are always threatening to close ‘tax havens? With the bulk of deposits from outside the Anglosphere, the incentive for the Swiss to disclose all is zero.

Especially as the two largest tax havens are the US and the City. And they keep obsessing about the Swiss role!

*All illegal capital transfers.