Switzerland’s finance minister is supportive of exchanging bank client data with foreign tax authorities under certain conditions, which the Swiss government is due to begin talking about in June 2013.
In a newspaper interview to local daily Tages-Anzeiger, the Swiss finance minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, siad, "If you ask me what automatic exchange of information is realistic for me, then there would be two main requirements from a Swiss point of view."
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Widmer-Schlumpf’s requirements are that all other "meaningful" global financial centres also exchange data on an equivalent basis, and that the exchange extends to names tied to vehicles such as trusts linked to offshore accounts.
Swiss bank secrecy has come under fire post the financial crisis, especially from the United States, France and Germany.
Previously, Widmer-Schlumpf had signalled willingness to discuss automatic exchange of information, though not as forthcomingly.
The Swiss coalition government remains divided on the issue of exchanging bank client data with foreign tax authorities, even after European holdouts Luxumbourg and Austria agreed last month to share data on accounts held by foreigners.
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By GlobalDataSwitzerland had been singled out in April by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as a "laggard in making progress toward meeting new global standards for tax data exchange".
