Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

In this blog I have raised the question of the promotion in Luxembourg (you known the small place where everybody knows everyone and that is self-regulated as stated to the OECD and GRECO assessors) of employees that are neither competent nor honest despite evidences in public and official sources that may be crossed like judiciary sources and corporate registration.

Former employers of such professionals, that are major companies in Luxembourg supported by the leaders either political of professional, may be upset by my researches that demonstrate that experience and professional standing are a charade in Luxembourg. It is very amazing to see that they remove from their website keywords that are not compatible with the recruitment and the support of such employees. I have kept screens of the former communication and the screens of a google search of keywords.


First case

The communication at the time of an employee that was neither competent nor honest was:
• “the system of values by which our company lives is simple : build trust”,
• our teams are “accurate and efficient” and “highly qualified” .

After the employee was finally fired after he had been supported several months despite a lack of competence and a bad behaviour since the beginning, the company has changed its communication to state that “Integrity defines our business, our company, our people, the information we process and the words we use. Our Professionalism is at work every day striving for excellence to exceed your expectations".

I find it amazing that now some keywords should have been removed as they were not compatible with the management of the case of the employee (recruitment, support): ): the whole sentences were removed and keywords like “trust”, “accurate”, “professionalism”, “qualified”, “integrity” are no longer stated.


Second case

Another company that hired the employee communicated that when he was responsible for the recruitment of experts in legal matters that “Recruiting high quality staff is essential to the success of the firm. X undergoes a rigorous and demanding selection process, which takes the long-term perspective into account (…) Particular attention is paid to constantly updating the knowledge and technical skills of partners, lawyers and associates whilst assuring the highest possible ethical standards are adhered to”

I find it amazing that some keywords should have been removed as they were not compatible with the management of the case of the employee (hired despite he went to the court at a director’s level to contest his dismissal + he lost at the court of appeal where his bad behaviour was demonstrated): the whole sentence was removed and the keywords “high quality staff”, “rigorous”, “ethical” are no longer stated.


What can we conclude?

In this center that gave a “generous grant” to the FATF to pay for an improvement of the information technology systems (as if for example a litigant would give a generous grant to pay for an improvement of the information technology systems to a court that is gonna judge his or her litigation, which would be a problem), experience, and above all professional standing as defined, are actually not sought.

Furthermore those who deplore this lax behaviour before public and official sources are excluded from the labour market, which means that whistleblowing provisions cannot be credible in their implementation in Luxembourg.

A the time when the US senate is gonna investigating on tax havens targeting explicitly Switzerland and Liechtenstein, this is not fair for these centers that do not do not gather the advantages of an on shore jurisdiction because they do not belong to Europe and the advantages of off shore states that are similar to a tax haven (taxes and banking secrecy).

As I already wrote low taxes and banking secrecy are criteria of tax havens: but the determining criterion is permissiveness that is definitely met in Luxembourg when observing what is going on in the small place where everybody knows everyone.

An interesting conference took place in Luxembourg a few days ago.

It was organised by PRiM (the association of Risk Management Professionals in Luxembourg) in association with POG (the Personnel Officers' Group) and Hudson on a topic which is becoming of increasing importance : People Risk.

Unfortunately the critical point of the topic for Luxembourg was not on the agenda : why dishonest professionals in Luxembourg are knowingly hired and supported when ethical professionals are fired or repudiated in the recruitment process ?

This support of dishonest professionals was underlined by the CSSF in its annual report 2004 and is unfortunately still verified on the field in crossed public and official sources (judiciary and corporate registration) that are the visible part of the iceberg .

Read press release

" Small countries survive as financial centres because they are more agile, because they can act more quickly, and because there is this close cooperation between the actors." , Lucien Thiel said at the “Panel discussion: How can privacy survive in an environment of increasing information exchange?”, in the framework of the Liechtenstein Dialogue that took place in 2007.

Lucien Thiel is the best representative of the Luxembourg financial center as Member of the Luxembourg Parliament (same party as the Prime Minister) and Former General Manager, Luxembourg Bankers’ Association (ABBL). And what is says definitely express the deep business culture of the Luxembourg financial Center.

After the Liechtenstein scandal early this year he is the one who said that "It is not our duty to control if the tax payer was honest" and "Banking secrecy remains: Luxembourg is not compelled to communicate its clients' data".

In the framework of the transposition of the Second European Directive relating to AML it is the Luxembourg Bankers’ Association (ABBL) he chaired that wrote in an annual report that "offences such as forgery, use of forgery, false balance sheet, use of false balance sheet or unauthorised use of corporate property are vague and ambiguous" (ABBL, Annual Report 2003, page 22).

Knowing the business stake of audits with a commercial relationship between auditors and auditees, and that audit firms, and especially every big four firm, are members of the ABBL this means that in Luxembourg auditors consider that offences such as forgery, use of forgery, false balance sheet, use of false balance sheet or unauthorised use of corporate property are vague and ambiguous as they did not repudiate the statement. Furthermore there are very little declarations of suspicion from auditors in Luxembourg as observed the Annual Report 2007 from the Minister of Justice: only 4 declarations of suspicion for a profession that has 350 professionals plus 280 trainees. Such figure is not realistic all the more than a declaration of suspicion means the loss of the client and of prospects (how can they rely on an auditor that is not pragmatic enough?) in a country where there is a business model for growth from the audit leader that do not care of the IFAC warning about that culture.

We are no longer talking about banking secrecy or tax advantages. As I already wrote it is a mistake to focus on these.

We are talking about what was called "this close cooperation between the actors" at the Liechtenstein Dialogue 2007. But this "close cooperation" unfortunately appears much more like complicity to act quickly to hide dysfunctions and hush up issues: complicity for the “reason of business”.

Outcomes of the Liechtenstein Dialogue 2007