Local tax authorities explain this step, which at first glance grossly violates the right of evaders to non-public consideration of claims against them by fiscal services, as due to their own overload. The country's tax administration ESTV is forced to resort to such radical measures due to the huge number of requests sent to it from abroad – mainly from Germany, France and Russia: the competent authorities of these states regularly inquire about the accounts of their own citizens in Swiss banks.
The names of those whom the tax authorities have taken an interest in appear on the ESTV website in the interests of these people themselves, Swiss tax officials claim – so that those who find themselves in the lists can seek legal support in time.
“This is a special situation where the name of a person about whom a request comes is published in open access,” admits Alexander Dumas, a representative of ESTV. Many states that send requests do not allow the Swiss tax authority to independently contact foreign bank clients, and some simply cannot be reached by the tax officials.
The banks themselves are not too interested in finding clients: due to recent changes and the actual abolition of banking secrecy, many of them fall into the category of ‘former’, their accounts are closed, funds have been withdrawn from the country, and working with them is obviously superfluous for banks. In order to somehow warn such people and give them the opportunity to resort to qualified legal assistance in advance, the Swiss tax administration decided to declassify the names of those whom the tax authorities at home have taken an interest in.
Is the Swiss ‘board of honor’ becoming a pillory of the internet, to which people are unjustly nailed whose guilt is only implied but not proven? The information on the ESTV website is available not only to potential evaders themselves, but also to any interested person willing to examine the lists in search of familiar names – from neighbors and colleagues to managers and life partners, past and present.
Journalists from many tabloid publications also showed curiosity; their keen eyes did not miss, for example, the fact that German tax authorities sent a request to their Swiss counterparts regarding the great-great-grandson of Reich Chancellor Bismarck, Francisco José Ortiz von Bismarck. In April of this year, the well-known banker with German citizenship was offered via the internet to contact the Swiss fiscal services within ten days or to provide an address for delivery of correspondence on the territory of the Confederation.
The ESTV list contains many names of citizens of Germany, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia, India, and the United States. True, the names of US citizens appear on the site only as initials. Whether there is a connection between the requests sent to Switzerland regarding German citizens and the purchase by some German states of CDs with personal data of tax evaders (the legal aspects of these transactions are far from unambiguous in Germany and have become the subject of several court proceedings in Switzerland) remains only to be guessed. “We do not know for sure whether it is about stolen data,” explains Alexander Dumas, “but we are guided by principles of trust in relation to colleagues.”
Swiss media consider the current situation amazing, calling the publication of information a ‘violation of the last taboos’. “Now anyone can learn about potential problems with the tax inspectorate. It is surprising that our tax administration is still ready to demand from foreign colleagues the concealment of information and compliance with secrecy regarding documents received from Switzerland,” laments the Zurich weekly Sonntags Zeitung.
As «Russkaya Germaniya» writes, Swiss openness caused surprise and misunderstanding in German political circles – especially since the neighboring country has never been a model of transparency in slippery financial matters. The publication in open access of personal data of people suspected of tax evasion is incompatible with German laws protecting tax secrecy, emphasizes the Finance Minister of Baden-Württemberg – one of those states that refused to buy stolen data in Switzerland – Nils Schmid. “Ultimately, the task of fiscal authorities in the fight against tax evasion is to protect the interests of the vast majority of honest taxpayers, not to nail individuals to the pillory,” the official said.