The Swiss government said it has authorized a first group of banks to cooperate with US authorities to help settle a dispute over tax evasion.
“The [Swiss] Federal Council gave various banks authorization to cooperate,” the government in Bern said in a statement on its Web site on Friday, without disclosing the number or names of lenders.
Banks were “encouraged” to give “serious consideration to their participation in the program and to make their decisions in this regard in a timely manner,” it said.
Switzerland in August agreed to a draft plan with the US, ending more than two years of negotiations over US probes of at least a dozen banks, including Credit Suisse Group AG and Julius Baer Group Ltd, which allegedly helped Americans evade taxes. Under the agreement, banks not already under US investigation are able to disclose wrongdoing voluntarily and turn over account information on clients to avoid fines.
UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, avoided prosecution by paying US$780 million in 2009, admitting it helped Americans evade taxes and handing over data on 4,500 accounts. Wegelin & Co, the oldest Swiss private bank, pleaded guilty in January and paid US$74 million. It has since closed its doors. Since 2009, the US has prosecuted 68 account holders and more than 30 banking professionals for offshore tax crimes.
Switzerland increased private cross-border financial assets to US$2.2 trillion last year, Boston Consulting Group said in a report in May. Total assets under management at Swiss banks increased by 320 billion Swiss francs (US$354 billion) to SF5.6 trillion last year, with the proportion of foreign assets unchanged at just over 50 percent, according to the Basel, Switzerland-based Swiss Bankers Association.
Swiss banks that seek to avoid prosecution for fostering tax evasion through secret accounts held by US clients face penalties of as much as 50 percent of the value of those assets under the plan announced in August. Credit Suisse and Julius Baer have both said they expect to pay a fine and hand over client information to resolve the probes.
Firms “that have to assume they have violated US law” have until the end of the year to notify US authorities that they wish to participate in the program, the government said.
“Banks must comply with applicable Swiss law, particularly data protection and employment law provisions, within the framework of their cooperation,’’ it said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained