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A comment on New facts about the leadup to the Beirut explosion. Parent comment

Re:New facts about the leadup to the Beirut explosion by simonh on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @04:01AM (#24280239)
Yes you would, and in fact there's been a lot of work done on this and a lot more work to be done. Switzerland has been pushed into radically revising it's financial privacy laws. The era of secret numbered Swiss bank accounts is pretty much over. Many banks have fallen foul of anti-money laundering regulations and fined billions of dollars. It's not great that they violated the rules, but the fact they have been held to account is huge progress.

Nobody can snap their fingers and change how every country in the globe regulates their businesses though. The basic principle of companies owning other companies is too fundamental to abolish, and if you can create one link then you can make chains and these can be complex. There are no magic wands to solve this, so it's going to take perseverance and hard work, and continuing pressure on politicians.

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Re:New facts about the leadup to the Beirut explosion by throw0101a on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @06:48AM (#24281202)
> Switzerland has been pushed into radically revising it's financial privacy laws. The era of secret numbered Swiss bank accounts is pretty much over.

Making the US the largest tax haven in the world.

* https://fsi.taxjustice.net/en/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Secrecy_Index

Seems that South Dakota is very popular for it:

* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/the-great-amer...

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Re:New facts about the leadup to the Beirut explosion by bhaak on Wednesday August 26, 2020 @05:26AM (#24280705)
> secret numbered Swiss bank accounts

BTW, that's quite a myth. There were never bank accounts where the banks didn't know who the client was. But not everybody at the banks had access to the info what account belonged to which person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered_bank_account

Of course if you as a foreign country could get info about your own citizens having bank accounts is a different question (and that has luckily changed in recent years).

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