Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

The the FSA's Financial Crime conference took place a dew days ago.
John Tiner, Chief Executive, FSA, demonstraded the awareness of the FSA and the british financial community.

See speech

The websites of bankers associations in the financial centres show that the Big Four are often members of these associations (Cf. British Bankers Association , Swiss Bankers Associations, and Luxembourg Bankers Associations)
This membership may be a problem for the independence because Big Four are the auditors and banks are the auditees.
The risk for the independence and the reputation depends on values that are shared and stated in the framework of the associations.

As far as the British Bankers Association is concerned it is involved in the FATF works (BBA response to FATF consultation paper on the review of the FATF 40 recommendations , Proposed Amendments to the Money Laundering Regulations 2001 . The wording of the contributions demonstrates a responsibility of professionals in this center.

As far as the Swiss Bankers Association is concerned, it does not seem involved in the FATF works and wants to minimize requirements for professionals.


As far as the Luxembourg Bankers Association is concerned it is not involved in the FATF works. Above all the ABBL standardized accounting frauds by stating that “offences such as forgery, use of forgery, false balance sheets, use of false balance sheets or unauthorised use of corporate property should not be included. These are offences with financial connotations which are confused with laundering for the sole purpose of applying exceptional powers to these vague offences.” (See Report 2003)
Auditors in Luxembourg should have disapproved of the wording, which involves every member of the ABBL, and especially them. The consequence is that after cases like Enron, Parmalat, and Worldcom... there are some auditors that standardize accounting offences through their membership in business networks, and are therefore much more on auditees' side than on the controlling side.

A couple of weeks ago an article that was published in Liberation by Mr Arnaud Montebourg , who is one of the co-authors of the reports on financial crime, that targeted the United Kingdom, the territories of the Crown, Monaco, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg.
In his article Montebourg took a swipe at Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg.
Montebourg's analysis does not make sense but the press release that was issued in common by Luxembourg and Switzerland was a mistake. Neither Montebourg nor the authorities of the financial centres are credible.
Montebourg's analysis does not make sense because countries that have an attractive tax policy have the right to define their policy provided that they are credible in business ethics.
The press release that was issued in common by Luxembourg and Switzerland was a mistake because, as far as business ethics is concerned, Switzerland is more credible than Luxembourg where there are visible drifts that do not comply with competence and respectability (i.e. proper business conduct) that are required by the law of 1993. These are either denied or ignored so problems officially do not exist: the permissiveness feeds accusations on Luxembourg and financial centers in general.

A bogus pragmatism weakens international finance.

Who supports the best the financial centres: those who are clever enough to understand the stakes for the reputation and require a stricter behaviour, or those who supports negligence and bad governance by their silence and inaction including for official and public facts that cracked the ethical frontage?