March 25 (Bloomberg) — In yet another sign that financial centers are losing each other’s confidence, Geneva bankers are insisting that Gordon Brown, the champion of deregulated markets in London and the British Isles, favors tax cheats at least as much as he says they do.
March 25 (Bloomberg) — In yet another sign that financial centers are losing each other’s confidence, Geneva bankers are insisting that Gordon Brown, the champion of deregulated markets in London and the British Isles, favors tax cheats at least as much as he says they do.
The British prime minister is calling for curbs on tax evasion and bank secrecy ahead of next week’s Group of 20 summit at the ExCel conference center in the docks near Canary Wharf.
“How much safer would everybody’s savings be if the whole world finally came together to outlaw shadow banking systems and offshore tax havens?” Brown asked in a March 4 speech to U.S. Congress on a visit to Washington.
While financial services in places like Switzerland are under scrutiny, Britain has a network of semi-autonomous financial centers with little or no taxes. That puts Brown in no position to campaign on tax and secrecy, said Pierre Mirabaud, chairman of the Swiss Bankers Association in Geneva.
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