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by pif 721 days ago
> Zurich, Geneva

It's easy to govern a town in a competent-looking fashion when you have plenty of money to spend, and it's easy to have plenty of money to spend when you decide to close your eyes to the source of the cash flowing into your vaults.

1 comments

Singapore is more guilty of that than Switzerland. Singaporean banks are the post-FATCA Swiss banks.
>“Singaporean banks are the post-FATCA Swiss banks.”

What does that even mean?

Swiss banks largely don't exist in the way they did in the 1990s and prior because of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (an American regulation almost universally agreed to be overreaching and violating the sovereignty of other countries); privacy is only guaranteed to Swiss nationals, and they automatically share information with external governments. These days, if you want to be secretive about your banking but park assets in a stable country, you go to Singapore.