As the Süddeutsche itself reports, news that Deutsche Bank conducts offshore operations isn't new. As the paper notes, such activities aren't as prolific at Deutsche as at Switzerland's UBS, where the records traced at least 2,900 offshore entities. Back in 2009, it was already public knowledge that Deutsche Bank had some 500 subsidiaries in places known to be tax havens.
Still, the paper claims, the government has done little to stop a German firm from engaging in the kind of financial behavior Berlin has been aggressively combatting in countries like Luxembourg, Switzerland and Cyprus. The paper quotes the financial policy point man in parliament for the Green Party, Gerhard Schick, criticizing both the government and the business model of firms like Deutsche Bank. He alleges the banks may be contributing to the shielding of money laundering activities, tax evasion and money linked to corruption. He also alleges that Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative government "at the very least tolerates these illegal structures and is possibly protecting them." In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE published on Friday, the head of Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), Elke König, said her authority, although not responsible for taxes, would investigate if banks appeared to be systematically violating or helping people to violate tax law. "Banks have a special responsibility," she said.
For Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest bank, the revelations are creating a second wave of unwelcome scrutiny this week. On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, has launched an investigation into claims the bank hid billions of dollars of losses on credit derivatives during the financial crisis. Bundesbank investigators plan to fly to New York next week as part of the inquiry into claims that the bank miss valued credit derivatives in order to hide losses as high as $12 billion and avoid a government bailout.
5 comments:
Have you not paid any attention to the fact that stock markets around the world are reaching all time nominal highs despite the fact that the economies and companies that constitute these indexes are in dodgy health. Then there is the global derivatives market which has grown to over a quadrillion dollars thanks to cheap government money. The classic car and art markets have also have seen crazy spending as speculators have put money in these non FIAT investments as the purchasing power of these currencies is weakened ny money printing.
Then there is the fact that housing markets all over the world are rising at ridiculous rates. Investors flush with QE "money" have, for example, driven up house prices in: Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. In America Hedge Funds are now buying up thousands of houses as bets. Its 2008 all over again.
the IMF exemplifies the well known feature of economic pronouncements: on the one hand this will happen,but on the other hand it may not.
The following is quite a giveaway:
[The IMF ] also noted concerns that the stimulative impact of unconventional policies such as quantitative easing could gather momentum as economies recovered and that the policies might prove hard to reverse
First it urges more QE, and then it warns it could prove hard to reverse!
This is why successive doses of QE are a serious hostage to fortune
Under the agreement, banks in the G5 will be forced to reveal financial details of foreign clients which will then be handed on to the tax domicile to be checked for evasion. The agreement, which is described as a “pilot” scheme, is based on the America’s Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) which has been used to capture US tax evaders abroad since 2010.
In a letter to Algirdas Semeta, the EU tax commissioner informing him of the deal, the five finance ministers have said the “pilot will not only help in catching and deterring tax evaders but it will also provide a template as to the wider multilateral agreement we hope to see in due course.” They said they “invite other EU Member States to join in this pilot” which they hope will remove “the hiding places for those who seek to evade paying their taxes.”
Nothing new here. For the past 7 years my BNP bank in france sendt me an interest statement in french and in english of the interest earned and it clearly states a copy is for the UK tax office and they will let them know of it.
Anyone with serious money is usually not a UK resident anyway. The big UK problem is tax evasion by multi-nationals playing the license fees game and using low or special tax jurisdictions in Ireland and Luxembourg or other offshore havens to eliminate tax, not individuals.
Nothing new here. For the past 7 years my BNP bank in france sendt me an interest statement in french and in english of the interest earned and it clearly states a copy is for the UK tax office and they will let them know of it.
Anyone with serious money is usually not a UK resident anyway. The big UK problem is tax evasion by multi-nationals playing the license fees game and using low or special tax jurisdictions in Ireland and Luxembourg or other offshore havens to eliminate tax, not individuals.
Post a Comment