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.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
The global server market is expected to grow 12.8 percent annually this year, with artificial intelligence (AI) servers projected to account for 16.5 percent, driven by continued investment in AI infrastructure by major cloud service providers (CSPs), market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. Global AI server shipments this year are expected to increase 28 percent year-on-year to more than 2.7 million units, driven by sustained demand from CSPs and government sovereign cloud projects, TrendForce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) told the Taipei Times. Demand for GPU-based AI servers, including Nvidia Corp’s GB and Vera Rubin rack systems, is expected to remain high,
RSS