Switzerland has no evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein either has accounts or has links with any account in Swiss banks, the country's finance minister said Monday.
Despite speculation, no accounts belonging to the Iraqi leader had been reported by banks under the country's money laundering legislation, Kaspar Villiger said.
"Switzerland has one of the world's toughest set of rules on handling money from senior foreign officials," Villiger said during a parliamentary question session in the country's lower house.
Banks are required to identify the origin of all assets belonging to top officials.
"I believe the banks are actively carrying out their duties, not only on moral grounds but also because [the discovery of] accounts belonging to Saddam would do them enormous damage," Villiger said.
There have been persistent but unconfirmed rumors that Saddam holds secret Swiss bank accounts since a worldwide freeze on Iraqi assets in the wake of the country's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The freeze was part of a package of UN sanctions, which were imposed after the 1991 Gulf War because Iraq failed to show it had disarmed.
Iraqi assets of US$5.5 billion were frozen in 1990. The largest sums were found in the US, Britain and Switzerland, with smaller amounts in France, Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg and Italy .
In the 1990s, investigators said a clandestine network of hidden assets, front companies and secret funds was operated by Saddam's eldest half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a former intelligence chief who was Iraq's ambassador to the UN in Geneva for more than a decade until he was recalled to Baghdad in 1998.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
RSS