By The Huffington Post News Editors
By Stephen Brown
BERLIN, April 5 (Reuters) – German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Friday he was glad the identities of thousands of holders of bank accounts in tax havens had been leaked because it would help do away with a business model that Cyprus had shown was flawed.
“I’m glad about this report, which will increase the pressure,” he said, referring to a report by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in cooperation with some international media.
The investigation, titled “Secrecy for Sale”, details what it calls “complex offshore structures” used by wealthy people from all over the world, including government officials and their families. The German media says these include hundreds of Germans.
It has received major media coverage in Germany and France, where President Francois Hollande‘s former campaign treasurer was reported to have had joint ownership of two firms registered in the Cayman Islands, a Caribbean tax haven.
The ICIJ report said international banks have “aggressively worked” to help wealthy clients use offshore banking facilities in tax havens like the British Virgin Islands. This prompted a response from Germany‘s biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, defending the legality of its wealth management services.
Schaeuble told German radio it remained to be seen how much of the activity revealed by the ICIJ was actually illegal, “but much of it is at least a grey area”.
Berlin has taken a leading role in getting international bodies like the G20 and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to define clearly which countries were acting as tax havens and then ensure that “legal consequences are brought to bear”, he said.
The minister cited the example of euro zone member Cyprus, which was forced by its partners, led by Germany, to impose significant losses on depositors in its big banks in exchange for a 10 billion euro EU bailout.
The island nation has attracted large deposits from wealthy foreigners, particularly Russians, with low taxes and loose regulations. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
