The story broke in 2006: Since 9/11, US intelligence services have had access to practically any international money transfer data by infiltrating the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) network. Banks worldwide transfer money orders and personal customer data through this network. While the surveillance was all-embracing in 2001, it was gradually limited over the course of the last few years. Revealed by the New York Times, the SWIFT affair has had global as well as national implications. While this dissertation first examines the international dimension of the SWIFT surveillance, the analysis mainly focuses on the national repercussions for Switzerland. Arditi Prize 2010 in International Affairs.
A page-turning real-life thriller, Lucifer's Banker Uncensored is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the secret Swiss high-net worth banking industry and a harrowing account of our government's justice system. Updated and Uncensored! As a private banker working for the largest bank in the world, UBS, Bradley Birkenfeld was an expert in Switzerland's shell-game of offshore companies and secret numbered accounts. He wined and dined ultrawealthy clients whose millions of dollars were hidden away from business partners, spouses, and tax authorities. As his client list grew, Birkenfeld lived a life of money, fast cars, and beautiful women, but when he discovered that UBS was planning to betray him, he blew the whistle to the US Government. The Department of Justice scorned Birkenfeld's unprecedented whistle-blowing and attempted to silence him with a conspiracy charge. Yet Birkenfeld would not be intimidated. He took his secrets to the US Senate, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Internal Revenue Service, where he prevailed. His bombshell revelations helped the US Treasury recover over $15 billion (and counting) in back taxes, fines, and penalties from American tax cheats. But Birkenfeld was shocked to discover that at the same time he was cooperating with the US Government, the Department of Justice was still doggedly pursuing him. He was arrested and served thirty months in federal prison. When he emerged, the Internal Revenue Service gave him a whistle-blower award for $104 million, the largest such reward in history. A page-turning real-life thriller, Lucifer's Banker Uncensored is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the secret Swiss high-net worth banking industry and a harrowing account of our government's justice system. Readers will follow Birkenfeld and share his outrage with the incompetence and possible corruption at the Department of Justice, and they will cheer him on as he ''hammers'' one of the most well-known and powerful banks in the world.
In Secrets of Swiss Banking, offshore financial specialist Hoyt Barber shows how to protect your hard-earned assets by safely and legally moving your money into trusted Swiss financial institutions. Along with timely banking advice and solid investment insights, Barber provides authoritative information on a variety of Swiss banking-related issues—from the basics of opening an account to the nuances of numerous Swiss banking and investment strategies. He also details Swiss banking policies and regulations along with U.S. tax and reporting requirements.
Inside Swiss Banking provides an insider's perspective on how Swiss banks work, what legal frameworks guide them and how they navigate though the choppy waters of an increasingly global marketplace. Covering areas reaching from the Holocaust to Ferdinand Marcos and the most recent troubles of UBS in the United States, readers will get a rare level of insight into the many mysteries of Swiss banking, the true meaning of bank secrecy and the challenges facing the Swiss Banking brand as a new world order is about to transpire in the aftermath of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
An insight into bank secrecy in major jurisdictions, complemented by chapters on privacy, data protection, conflict of laws and exchange of information.
Award-winning journalist Isabel Vincent unravels the labyrinthine story behind the headlines by taking us through the life of survivor Renée Appel, who found refuge in Canada. With her, we come to understand what it means to wait for justice: how, on the eve of war, desperate men and women entrusted their life savings to Swiss banks; how Nazis laundered gold looted from Jewish families; how the demands of international business, Swiss bank secrecy, and greed kept the truth hidden for over half a century and still prevent restitution from being made. Hitler's Silent Partners is a rigorous and often heartbreaking look at statistics seldom given a human face.
Each week the oil and gas fields of sub-Saharan Africa produce well over a billion dollars' worth of oil, an amount that far exceeds development aid to the entire African continent. Yet the rising tide of oil money is not promoting stability and development, but is instead causing violence, poverty, and stagnation. It is also generating vast corruption that reaches deep into American and European economies. In Poisoned Wells, Nicholas Shaxson exposes the root causes of this paradox of poverty from plenty, and explores the mechanisms by which oil causes grave instabilities and corruption around the globe. Shaxson is the only journalist who has had access to the key players in African oil, and is willing to make the connections between the problems of the developing world and the involvement of leading global corporations and governments.
Why has Switzerland - a tiny, land-locked country with few natural advantages - become so successful for so long at so many things? In banking, pharmaceuticals, machinery, even textiles, Swiss companies rank alongside the biggest and most powerful global competitors. How did they get there? How do they continue to refresh themselves? Does the Swiss 'Sonderfall' (special case) provide lessons others can learn and benefit from? Can the Swiss continue to perform in a hyper-competitive global economy? Swiss Made offers answers to these and many other questions about the country as it describes the origins, structures and characteristics of the most important Swiss companies. The authors suggest success is due to a large degree to sound entrepreneurial thinking and an openness to new ideas. And they venture a surprising forecast on the country's ability to keep pace in an age of globalisation.
