Talk:Bank secrecy/Archive 1

References; NOR
Howdy. I added a RefImprove for the article and a SectNOR for the "Reasons..." section. The Reasons section, without references, seems to be an arbitrary list. --NightMonkey (talk) 21:11, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Article financial privacy is a duplicate of this. --33rogers (talk) 21:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose
 * Bank secrecy appears to be primarily about anonymity, whereas financial privacy is about privacy. While they are somewhat related and may interact, they are not synonymous.
 * For instance, anonymity is about whether the bank knows who the customer is (or how much they know about the customer), privacy is about how they use or share the information they have about the customer.
 * Definitely not duplicates. Though the concepts relate somewhat, I think better to just explain the relation and keep them separate.  Zodon (talk) 00:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose, although I differ slightly with Zodon about why.
 * The Bank Secrecy article is about bank customers using secrecy policies or laws to evade taxes in their home countries and banks encouraging this behavior, which may not be illegal for foreigners in the headquarters jurisdiction of the bank.
 * The Financial Privacy article is, instead, about banks not releasing private information about their customers to others who are not legally entitled to such information.
 * They are definitely not duplicates. --Zeamays (talk) 18:36, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Globalise: Examples from other Countries
Hello everyone, I have added some information on the trend to use Singapore and Hong Kong companies for banking secrecy to replace the use of Swiss banks MTOVS (talk) 17:26, 8 February 2011 (UTC) The article uses mainly US examples. A worldwide view of the subject should include examples from other countries. twilsonb (talk) 06:30, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I differ with Twilsonb. It is mainly about Swiss and offshore banking practices, but it offends many other nations taxing authorities, including the US IRS. I have added examples of Swiss and Lichtenstein banks, with references, but I lack references to the how this behavior has defrauded nations other than the US of taxes. --Zeamays (talk) 18:36, 19 January 2010 (UTC)


 * France, Germany, and Italy have, during the past few months, made many statements alleging that banking secrecy has facilitated very significant tax evasion by their citizens. These, and other, countries have taken various actions to limit the effects of banking secrecy.  One significant result of those actions is the agreement by Switzerland and other countries to implement the OECD model provision in bilateral tax treaties.  I can easily find the references to the public French, German, and Italian statements, but I'm not sure where to add them in the article.  If you suggest a specific place, I can take care of it.--Gautier lebon (talk) 10:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Gautier, I suggest you add the text and references to the Criticisms section or create a new section parallel to United States Legislation in Response to Bank Secrecy. If it is mainly about the agreements, you might place the information in the Swiss Banking Act of 1934 section, since agreements with the US are already there.  Best wishes, --Zeamays (talk) 14:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I have created a new section.--Gautier lebon (talk) 09:32, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Bank Act of 1934 section needs clarification with both historical and modern info
right now this section starts out talking about the Act of 1934 and then segues immediately into describing what seems like much more modern state of affairs. I think the article needs both an explanation of the original policy regime after 1934 (which probably did not include release of account info of "terrorists" and which may or may not have allowed Swiss judges to issue subpoenas to banks) as well as of the early 21st century situation. 76.119.30.87 (talk) 06:11, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

No reference
In the "Tax evasion" section, the following is stated "Governments have accused Swiss banks of detaining most of the money owned by criminally charged politicians, which Oxfam International estimate to about $50 billion a year deposited in offshore tax havens, nearly the size of the $57 billion annual global aid budget." There is no citation for this statement. Unless a citation is added, it should be deleted.--Gautier lebon (talk) 10:38, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ Existed on the page for a couple years without source (although the CN tag was recent) OSbornarfcontribs. 16:42, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

2.2 USA PATRIOT Act Section
has loosely sourced opinions. The stuff like "this can never be allowed to happen again". We could find a politician or bureaucrat quoted as saying the benefits of PATRIOT act in the financial system to replace the clear opinions. Does it make sense for an article on Bank secrecy to contain passionate comments on terrorist acts? It seems to me rather off-topic and inappropriate for the article, jeopardizing its objectivity. The section I have in mind is "The act of using airplanes to blow up the Twin Towers and the attempt that was made to blow up the Pentagon is something that cannot be allowed to happen again. Many lives were senselessly lost that day for nothing." In my opinion this section should be dropped as it does not enrich the article.
 * Again spin with this framing. We discuss quite decent and polite. Probably make this "Prism".Aucassin 2 (talk) 15:39, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Where is Bradley Birkenfeld
How can this article be complete without information on his whistleblowing and its effects on UBS and Swiss banking secrecy. Duchesstimesxtwo (talk) 17:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Bradley Birkenfeld is not as important as you think. His actions and "its effects on UBS and Swiss banking secrecy" have been covered extensively at UBS, UBS tax evasion controversies, and Bradley Birkenfeld. Any more mention of him here would be WP:UNDUE. LivinRealGüd (talk) 08:53, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Popular belief
Bank secrecy laws did not originate in Switzerland. This section needs to be revised, and we have to possibly go back a bit further than the usual reference to a Swiss bank account in a James Bond movie. Switzerland played a considerable role but a number of historical developments in Great Britain and other countries were left out. I therefore suggest to expand the history of bank secrecy based on a more pertinent publication "Financial Havens, Banking Secrecy and Money Laundering" Issued as: Double issue 34 and 35 of the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Newsletter, Issue 8 of the UNDCP Technical Series. Thanks.Osterluzei (talk) 07:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

POV header on Bradley Birkenfeld
This section does not accurately reflect the Swiss media opinion related to the Bradley Birkenfeld case. In particular, the neutrality of the content is questioned. The point of view is biased. Also, it quotes the newspaper Blick, a controversial source of information. Please discuss and improve. Aerophile5390 (talk) 12:01, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ Agreed, removing entire section as it goes against WP:NOT and is not WP:NEUTRAL nor is it truly relevant to banking secrecy as a whole. LivinRealGüd (talk) 22:40, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

External links modified
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A Fantastic source for this article
Check out the following source: It has a PDF file for each country that practices banking secrecy in full historical detail. LivinRealGüd (talk) 03:48, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * https://www.financialsecrecyindex.com
 * or if the link stops working: search "Financial Secrecy Index"