Credit Suisse has allowed the morally bankrupt to steal from the poor for too long
The bombshell revelations of the Suisse secrets, reported by the Guardian and a number of international outlets, are a continuation of the path-breaking work of the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers. In one sense, it’s the same old story over and over again. Every time journalists lift the financial sector’s curtain of secrecy, a web of corruption and nefarious activities is revealed, disproportionately from shady customers and families of dictators, with a smattering of seemingly respectable politicians in democracies caught in the net.
But this time, there’s something different. This time it’s not a small, obscure offshore island or a struggling developing country trying to figure out an alternative business model to drugs. It’s a major bank in the middle of Europe, in one of the most prosperous countries in the world; a country where the “rule of law” is supposed to reign supreme. Even more disappointing, given that the country and bank involved have made promises of transparency and doing better. And that’s the point: without more transparency, there can’t be accountability.
In fact, Switzerland’s position increasingly appears two-faced, with a legal framework that penalises those who attempt to pierce its secrecy. Countries around the world have passed whistleblower laws, recognising how hard it is to uncover untoward behaviour. Frances Haugen’s exposure of Facebook’s misdeeds probably wouldn’t have been possible without the US’s strong whistleblower laws. But Switzerland, one of the oldest democracies in the world, seems to have doubled down on its commitment to secrecy, regardless of the incentives it provides for bad behaviour, by threatening journalists and others who try to access data showing what is going
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