Switzerland & United States are the world’s most corrupt nations

No wonder the "neutral" Switzerland piles up hundreds of NGOs filling their pockets with "donations". The bastion of justice is indeed the ultimate repository of wealth stolen worldwide.

About USA it was not a secret.. The US gouvernement under Obama said it clearly that they wanted to  bring all the money to the US...

They attacked Switzerland banking system with the law suit against UBS..  nothing new !!

The devil is in the details: Tax havens become absolutely ethical when they serve to reduce the burden on the citizens of corrupt governments who coerce tax money from people -at threat of incarceration- in order to transfer a large percentage of that tax money to politicians and cronies by various kickback schemes, one of them being criminal and deadly wars of aggression, fought to grab
resources for private corporations.

Switzerland & United States are the world’s most corrupt nations – report
RT : 5 Feb, 2018

A new study from advocacy group Tax Justice Network reveals that Switzerland is the world’s most-corrupt country, with a “high secrecy score of 76.” It’s followed by the US and the Cayman Islands.

“Switzerland is the grandfather of the world’s tax havens, one of the world’s largest offshore financial centers, and one of the world’s biggest secrecy jurisdictions or tax havens,” said the group’s report ‘Financial Secrecy Index — 2018 Results’.

It explained that “the Swiss will exchange information with rich countries if they have to, but will continue offering citizens of poorer countries the opportunity to evade their taxpaying responsibilities.

“These factors, along with ongoing aggressive pursuit of financial sector whistleblowers (resorting at times to what appear to be non-legal methods) are ongoing reminders of why Switzerland remains the most important secrecy jurisdiction in the world today,” said the report.

The index ranks countries for the assistance their legal systems provide to money-launderers, and to all people who seek to protect corruptly-obtained wealth. The higher the secrecy score, the more corrupt the government is.

In order to create the index, a secrecy score is combined with a figure representing the size of the offshore financial services industry in each country.

According to the report, the United States’ secrecy score (60) is rising, which results in attracting corrupt wealth. In 2013, the US was in the sixth place, and in 2015 it took the third in the rating.

“The continued rise of the US in the 2018 index comes off the back of a significant change in the US share of the global market for offshore financial services. Between 2015 and 2018 the US increased its market share in offshore financial services by 14 percent,” said the report. In total the US accounts for 22.3 percent of the global market in offshore financial services.

“The US provides a wide array of secrecy and tax-free facilities for non-residents, both at a Federal level and at the level of individual states.”

The report added that “Financial secrecy provided by the US has caused untold harm to the ordinary citizens of foreign countries, whose elites have used the United States as a bolt-hole for looted wealth.”

Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Germany, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, and Guernsey closed out the top-10 most corrupt countries.

The least corrupt nations among the 112 covered in the rating were San Marino, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Montserrat.

The countries with the lowest secrecy score were UK (42) and Slovenia (42), Belgium (44), Sweden (45), Lithuania (47), Italy (49) and Brazil (49).

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EU has 'whitewashed' Switzerland, one of the 'world's most harmful tax havens' - Oxfam
RT : 10 Oct, 2019

The European Union has removed seven countries from its list of tax havens, the bloc’s finance ministers announced on Thursday. They include Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and five other countries.

Brussels set up a blacklist and a gray list of tax havens in December 2017, following revelations of widespread avoidance schemes used by corporations and wealthy individuals to lower their tax bills. Blacklisted countries face reputational damage and stricter controls on transactions with the EU.

The largest financial center on the blacklist, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was removed after it adopted new rules on offshore structures in September.

The Gulf state charges no corporate taxes, making it a potential target for firms seeking to avoid paying tax in the countries where they actually operate.

The EU does not automatically add countries that don’t charge tax - which can be a sign of being a tax haven - to its blacklist, but it requested the UAE introduce rules that would allow only companies with a real economic activity there to be incorporated in order to reduce the risks of tax dodging.

The Marshall Islands has also been removed from the blacklist, which still includes nine extra-EU jurisdictions - mostly Pacific islands with few financial relations with the EU.

Switzerland, one of the EU's close trading partners, had been on the gray list. According to the EU, the nation has "delivered on its commitments" to prevent it from being a tax haven and is now off the list.

Albania, Costa Rica, the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius and Serbia have also been removed from the gray list, with around 30 jurisdictions remaining on it.

Countries on the gray list risk being moved to the blacklist if they fail to deliver on their commitments.

“The EU has whitewashed two of the world’s most harmful tax havens,” said Chiara Putaturo of Oxfam, referring to the de-listing of Switzerland and Mauritius.

“Despite recent reforms, both countries will continue to offer sweet treats to tax-dodging companies,” she said, as cited by Reuters.

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European Union blacklists 17 countries as tax havens
RT : 6 Dec, 2017

The European Union (EU) finance ministers have adopted a blacklist of 17 countries for refusing to cooperate with its crackdown on tax evasion.

The countries listed are American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, South Korea, Macau, Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.

The President of Panama Juan Carlos Varela said the country was “not in any way a tax haven.”

EU tax commissioner Pierre Moscovici said the blacklist represented "substantial progress,” adding, "Its very existence is an important step forward. But because it is the first EU list, it remains an insufficient response to the scale of tax evasion worldwide."

Forty-seven other nations were included in a public “gray” list of countries which are currently not compliant with EU standards but have committed to change their tax rules. The lists followed the recent leaking of the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers.

To determine whether a country is a "non-cooperative jurisdiction" the EU index measures the transparency of its tax regime and tax rates. It also checks whether the tax system encourages multinationals to unfairly shift profits to low tax regimes, avoiding higher duties in other states.

According to French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, the blacklisted countries could lose access to EU funds. Other possible countermeasures will be decided in the coming weeks, he said.

Last month, Le Maire said tax havens should be blocked from any right to seek help from global financial institutions like the International Monetary Bank or the World Bank.

Some countries such as Luxembourg and Malta have opposed stricter sanctions while EU Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said: “stronger countermeasures would have been preferable.”