German corruption:German public officials with secret bank accounts in Switzerland ...

Swiss MP threatens to disclose tax cheats 

BERLIN – A Swiss member of parliament alleged Saturday that top German public officials had secret bank accounts in Switzerland and threatened to out them if Germany purchased stolen data.

Alfred Heer, of the hard-right Swiss Peoples Party (SVP), told the daily Bild that his party would work towards having the law changed to allow the names to be published.

Bild said that Swiss financial sources had evidence that German politicians and judges maintained tax-dodging accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Germany has angered Switzerland by agreeing to purchase a stolen disc containing the names of 1,500 Swiss account holders who may have defrauded the German taxman.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said at the beginning of this month that Germany would stump up a reported 2.5 million euros (3.5 million dollars) to an anonymous whistle-blower for the disc.

Since then the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said it had been offered a second disc containing 2,000 names. According to the Frankfurter Runschau daily it includes data from Swiss banking giants UBS and Credit Suisse as well as insurer Generali.

Schaeuble told Saturdays Frankfurter Rundschau that he backed the purchase of such data, saying,

“My sympathy for people who regularly defraud the tax authorities by putting their fortunes in other countries is limited.”

The daily also reported that an unidentified German multimillionaire had taken legal action against the German subsidiary of UBS, accusing it of encouraging him to evade tax.

 –AFP