Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

Bloomberg has reported that two leading U.S. lawmakers proposed legislation that would impose new taxes on foreign banks that refuse to disclose the identity and contents of accounts owned by Americans.

The measure would impose a 30 percent withholding tax on income from U.S. assets held by non-U.S. institutions that refuse to name American account holders and report balances, deposits and withdrawals.

However the bill disappointed some of the most-aggressive critics of offshore-tax avoidance. It doesn't include a proposal from Mr. Obama to establish legal presumptions that favor the IRS in prosecuting suspected tax dodgers. It also leaves out more-stringent proposals from other lawmakers, including one that would treat offshore corporations as U.S. firms for tax purposes if their senior executives were located in the U.S. (see WSJ)

FATF today published a report about Switzerland.

According to FATF, Switzerland made significant progress.

FATF has just published a study about money laundering and terrorist financing in the securities sector. 

40 jurisdictions submitted a response to the questionnaire that is annexed (pages 80-86).

The objectives of the FATF Securities Typology Questionnaire were to collect information about: (i) the range of products classified as “securities” in various jurisdictions; (ii) how jurisdictions supervise compliance with anti-money laundering/combating terrorist financing (“AML/CTF”) requirements for these products; (iii) potential areas of AML/CTF vulnerabilities in the securities industry; (iv) suspicious transaction reports (STRs) in the securities industry; and (v) enforcement actions in the securities industry.

Unfortunately the response for each jurisdiction is not circulated, which does not contribute to the transparency to assess the regulation in the jurisdictions.

I wish I had the answer for every juristiction.