Zardari among 35 world rulers accused of keeping secret accounts

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Zardari among 35 world rulers accused of keeping secret accounts

Probability of a dictator or despot parking his money in banks of Switzerland is relatively high

Thursday, February 25, 2010
By Sabir Shah

LAHORE: During the 79-year history of secret bank accounts operational in countries like Switzerland, incumbent Pakistani President Asif Zardari is among the 35 presidents, prime ministers, civil and military dictators who have been alleged of hiding their ill-gotten wealth in these tax havens deemed extremely secure for long.

The list also includes two former Filipino presidents Joseph Estrada and Ferdinand Marcos, Nigeria’s General Abacha, Panama’s former dictator General Noriega, late Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, former Pakistani Premier Benazir Bhutto, former French President Jacques Chirac, former Peruvian President Fujimori, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, former Barbados Premier Seymour Arthur, ex-Ukranian Premier Pavel Lazarenko, ex-Guatemala President Alfonso Portillo, ex-Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Basdeo Panday, former Haitian President Jean-Claude Duvalier, Mali’s former dictator Moussa Traorem, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, former Congo President Sese Seke Mobutu, former President of Guinea Lansana Conte, former President of Togo Gnassingbe Eyadema, former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, former President of Gabon Omar Bongo, President of Equatorial Guinea Obiang Nguema, President of Burkina Faso Blaise Campore, President of Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso, President of Angola Eduardo dos Santos, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni and another former Nigerian dictator Ibrahim Babangida.

While a few of these above-mentioned world leaders have already been convicted, others are either under trial or have somehow managed to get away with these allegations. While in a few cases, formal court proceedings are still awaited; there is a handful in this list who were not found guilty of this crime though.

The history of laundered money parked in secret bank accounts in tax havens like Switzerland, Monaco, Liechtenstein and Austria etc, dates back to 79 years when an American gangster Alphonse Gabriel “Al-Capone,” was found stashing his illegitimate money in secret bank accounts.

It was actually three years after Al-Capone’s indictment that bank secrecy was codified by the 1934 Swiss Banking Act, triggered by a scandal in France, when MP Fabien Alberty had denounced tax evasion by eminent French personalities, including politicians, judges, industrialists, church dignitaries and directors of newspapers, who were found guilty of hiding their money in Switzerland.

Legislator Alberty had then dubbed his compatriots as ‘traitors,’ who were unaware that the money they had deposited in the Swiss banks, was lent by Switzerland to Germany, a rival of France in those days.

But since then, millions of individuals, investors, politicians, heads of state, corrupt civil and military dictators across the globe have been opening Swiss bank accounts every year to conceal their money.

Websites of companies specializing in facilitating off-shore customers to open Swiss accounts reveal that nearly 90 per cent of the bank deposits in these banks are less than $50,000, dispelling the common myth that one has to have millions in wallet at least to open a bank account in Switzerland.

A research reveals it was primarily due to a stern action initiated by the United States in 2009 against the largest Swiss bank, the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), which had actually forced the world’s most preferred tax haven to practically make its secrecy laws flexible.

It is owing to the still on-going US operations that the most-preferred Swiss Numbered Bank Accounts no longer exist today, thus making Switzerland struggle to reinterpret its view of tax evasion.

The Swiss Banking Association Report 2009 admits that the statistical probability of a dictator or despot parking his money in the banks of Switzerland is relatively high, but asserts that the Alpine nation does not want this money.

The Swiss Banking Association Report 2009 reads that the Swiss Money Laundering Act (in force since 1998) not only obliges all financial intermediaries to identify all clients and to establish the beneficial owners of the assets, but also binds these institutions to report any justified suspicion of money laundering to the authorities and freeze the suspicious assets.

It is imperative to know that the UBS and Credit Suisse, the two largest of 408 banks and security dealers operational in Switzerland, together account for over 50 per cent of the net balance sheet total of all banks in this picturesque tourist destination.