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Austria, Under Pressure, Defends Bank Secrecy Rules | |
(35 minutes later) | |
DUBLIN — Austria will not yield to pressure to follow Luxembourg in dropping its banking secrecy rules, Finance Minister Maria Fekter said Friday, as she sought to portray Britain as one of the European Union’s biggest tax havens. | |
“Great Britain has many money-laundering centers and tax havens in its immediate legal remit,” Ms. Fekter said, pointing to the Channel Islands, Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands. Those offshore financial centers are under effective British control, though all but Gibraltar remain technically outside of the European Union. | |
In a move that could raise pressure on Austria, Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, said on Friday that the bloc’s 27 leaders would discuss the issue at a meeting next month. | |
“The current economic crisis only helps to stress the urgent need for fair and effective tax systems,” Mr. Van Rompuy said in a statement broadcast on the Internet. Added pressure was placed after Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain announced plans to improve bank transparency in Europe and beyond. | |
In an opinion piece on Thursday in Kurier, an Austrian newspaper, Ms. Fekter called on the European Union to demand the same openness in financial matters of Britain as it had of Cyprus as a condition for the latter’s bailout. | |
Ms. Fekter spoke in Dublin on Friday as euro zone finance ministers were beginning two days of meetings in which the subject of combating tax evasion was to be on the agenda. The European tax commissioner, Algirdas Semeta, has said that tax evasion costs European nations about 1 trillion euros, or $1.3 trillion, in lost revenue each year, and cash-poor governments are eager to track down their citizens’ hidden assets. | |
Austria had been sending mixed messages on the topic, with its chancellor, Werner Faymann, suggesting recently that talks were possible. But Ms. Fekter was adamant on Friday, saying: “Austria is sticking to bank secrecy.” | |
On Wednesday, Luxembourg bowed to pressure from its European partners after the collapse of Cyprus’s financial sector and from the United States, which is demanding client data under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, and said it would start sharing banking information with other nations in 2015. | |
Luxembourg’s decision left Austria as the only European Union member state to not share foreign clients’ data with their home governments. Austria transfers to foreign account holders’ home governments the proceeds of a 35 percent withholding tax on interest income earned in Austrian banks, but it does not disclose the clients’ identities. | |
“We fight tax evasion and money laundering,” Ms. Fekter said, but added, the “automatic exchange of information involves a massive interference in people’s privacy rights.” | “We fight tax evasion and money laundering,” Ms. Fekter said, but added, the “automatic exchange of information involves a massive interference in people’s privacy rights.” |
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