Word: switzerland
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Along with Chocolate and Cheese, Switzerland is synonymous with secrecy: it's long been known as a place to put your money if you don't like taxes or you commit crimes for a living. Not an entirely fair characterization, to be sure, but it's a safe bet that the decision by Swiss bank UBS to turn over the names of some accused tax evaders has a few of the world's richest criminals a bit nervous. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...Switzerland's tradition of financial discretion goes back at least to the 17th century. In the wake of World War I, as many European currencies became unstable, the consistent (not to mention neutral) Swiss franc attracted depositors. After France, incensed by the loss of revenue, raided a Swiss bank's office in Paris and revealed the names on its accounts, the Swiss passed a law in 1934 making such disclosures criminal. Years later, Swiss banks both sheltered the assets of German Jews and accepted looted Nazi gold (and later set up a $1.25 billion compensation fund for Holocaust victims). Corrupt...
Faced with criticism from foreign governments, Switzerland has changed some of its ways. It added laws to combat money-laundering and cracked down on numbered accounts in the 1990s. But that doesn't mean the banks open their vaults for just anyone. When the U.S., which loses an estimated $100 billion in tax revenues every year on assets stashed overseas, demanded that UBS release information on an additional 52,000 accounts, the bank refused, saying the move would violate Swiss law. Of course, with some 27,000 UBS employees working in U.S. offices, Switzerland might not be the jurisdiction...
...Smile, you're in Swat," reads a billboard on the main road into the lush green honeymooners' valley in Pakistan once dubbed the "Switzerland of Asia." But over the past two years, Swat has been turned into a playground for the Taliban. And it may be the Taliban and their fellow Islamists who have the biggest reason to smile as a result of the Pakistani government's decision last week to end its floundering military campaign there and instead accept the Taliban's demand for the imposition of Islamic Shari...
Scarcely 100 miles from the Pakistani capital, Taliban forces loyal to jihadist preacher (and former chairlift operator) Maulana Fazlullah have brutally advanced across Swat - a region once known as the "Switzerland of Asia" - capturing more than four-fifths of the plush valley. Once a choice destination for honeymooners, Swat has over the past two years seen more than 1,500 people killed, close to 200 schools destroyed and girls' education banned, scores of beheadings and kidnappings, and more than 100,000 people driven from their homes. (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable North-West Frontier Province...