Media Dragon: Swiss spies suspected in tax espionage

How do you say ‘whoops’ in Russian? Podesta Group retroactively files more DOJ disclosures for pro-Putin work Washington Examiner. UserFriendly: “I for one am shocked, shocked!!!”

Cranston doesn't appear in NSW court

The prosecutor in an unprecedented tax fraud case linked to a former ... Michael Cranston resigned as deputy commissioner of the ATO in June ...

Former ATO chief's lawyer says evidence against him 'oppressive'

The lawyer for former senior tax officer Michael Cranston has complained about the amount of evidence filed against him, labelling it ...

Swiss spies suspected in tax espionage

A man suspected of being a Swiss spy has been indicted in Germany. He is suspected of having been employed by the Swiss intelligence services to spy on German tax officials in an attempt to discover who was involved in a 2010 leak of information from a Swiss Bank. German officials bought CDs containing the data in 2012, and shared it with officials across the European Union. In total the data helped recover €7bn in tax revenue.

The case is one of the stranger cases of state capture by the banking industry we have seen in recent years, and shows that despite claims that it is embracing transparency, the Swiss Government are still willing to go to extreme lengths to protect their banks being used as hubs for dirty money.

However, spies working for the Swiss government may think twice in the future about undertaking such missions, if stories circulating about the arrest of this suspect are to be believed. According to some reports Swiss prosecutors may have blown the cover of their spy by failing to redact passages of documents related to the prosecution of a Swiss banker for leaking the information.

Apartheid Gold and Swiss secrecy

For anyone looking for more about how Swiss banking secrecy and Swiss foreign policy are intertwined, look no further than this week’s feature on Apartheid gold in South Africa’s News 24 website.

The article looks at declassified documents from Switzerland which provide details of how Swiss banks helped the Apartheid regime stash their gold in the tax haven’s bank vaults.

Why were to Swiss to keen to help out? Bizarrely, it appears that one reason is that Switzerland was eyeing up South Africa as a safe haven for government officials and Swiss banks if World War three was to break out in Europe.

Tax, international co-operation and the developing world

Representatives from tax authorities from 35 countries met on the shores of Lake Victoria last week for a high level dialogue on how to improve tax collection on the continent. The meeting, which was hosted by the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), was the first of its kind, and gave some insight into the priorities of African tax officials.

Top of the target list appears to be tax incentives. According to the Ugandan Observer there appears to be widespread agreement that tax incentives given to large foreign companies to invest in Africa, simply aren’t working, and are costing states dearly.

Delegates at the event said that tax incentives are frequently a key ask form investors. Dumisani Masilela, the commissioner general of Swaziland’s tax body, argued that African governments needed to see how they could improve local businesses as a counter to this.

He said: “They [investors] want to take as much money as they can to their respective countries. The thing we need to be looking into is developing entrepreneurship among ourselves.”

Portugal eaten by Angola’s kleptocrats

An article in the New York Times this week highlights the damage that can be done by financial secrecy and offshore finance.

In Angola half of the population live on less than $3.10 a day, and poor healthcare contributed to yellow fever outbreak earlier this year. However, Danillo Dos Santos, the president’s son, still finds €500,000 to buy a collection of photographs at a celebrity auction.

Over three decades Dos Santos has ruled over Angola, but as one of Africa’s longest serving presidents steps down, many think little will change, because during that time the president has managed to concentrate power in the hands of a tiny elite. The most powerful, and the most wealthy are his daughter and his son, who control the state oil company and the state’s sovereign wealth fund. For years allegations have circulated that the Dos Santos family have used their grip on the economy to siphon off billions via offshore companies.

One consequence of the huge concentration of wealth in the hands of Angola’s elite has been its relationship with its former colonial master, Portugal.

Desperate for cash, Portugal has flung open its bank vaults to questionable Angolan cash, and has adopted a no questions asked policy on where that money might come from. The result has been a growing bribery problem involving Angolan investments in the country.

The full story can be found here.