Pirates of the Caribbean

Pirates of the Caribbean

By analysing the situation of the banking secrecy, we see that there are advantages, but also disadvantages to stop banking secrecy in countries like Switzerland.

Banking secrecy is something very implemented in the mind of the people particularly in Switzerland, by stopping this, a bank would have access to a lot of “private” information.  They would have the capacity to know, which political part you support, the association that you support, your religious belief. It’s very intrusive and we can understand that people are not inclined to be exposed like that and to accept to don’t keep the bank secrecy. As by not having it anymore would violate an important rule of the society that is the respect of property and privacy for individuals.

On the other hand, the banking secrecy, by making it public would bring a totally transparency, and help to avoid any money laundering or any tax evasion. By bringing more transparency in the banking sector, we could expect to obtain a real fiscal transparency. But it can also be dangerous to give so much power in the hand of the governments, for example we know that some governments are corrupted, by bringing everything public you have no more privacy on anything.

As we can see the question of banking secrecy is really not easy to answer. There are for both sides arguments that exist that are perfectly understandable. In my opinion, the banking secrecy should evoluate to permit to stop tax evasion, but not by bringing everything public. It’s important to find some better alternative to this question.

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