Sustainably Investing in Digital Assets Globally

Chapter 25Switzerland

Switzerland has long been a global center for the wealth management industry, housing around $2 trillion, or 27%, of global offshore wealth. Since 1934, Swiss bankers and regulators have resisted the efforts of foreign tax regulators, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States, to obtain information about secret Swiss bank accounts. They claimed compliance with Swiss law and the need to protect the privacy of their customers, as Swiss private bankers smuggled US taxpayer wealth from the United States to Switzerland in all sorts of creative ways. From bundles of cash hidden inside rolls of newspaper, to setting up shell companies, to jamming diamonds into toothpaste tubes, Swiss bankers aided tens of thousands of wealthy American clients to evade US taxes by using secret offshore bank accounts.

After giving up on their famous banking secrecy laws with a little nudging from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the IRS Criminal Investigations Division (IRS‐CI), which shut down the oldest private bank and slapped the largest and most prominent Swiss banks with billions of dollars in fines for aiding US tax evasion, Switzerland was on the verge of losing its competitive edge over rival financial markets.

But don't count Switzerland out just yet.¹

Blockchain Adoption: By establishing a global hub for virtual currencies known as the “Crypto Valley” in Zug, and the implementation of forward‐looking regulation by the Swiss Financial Market ...