Word: switzerland
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Geneva Different Policy, Same Results In its highest-level negotiations with Tehran since 1979, the U.S. sent a top diplomat to join international talks in Switzerland intended to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. The talks stalled, however, when Tehran refused to temporarily halt its nuclear program in exchange for a freeze on any new international sanctions...
...past decade, a dozen or so places have released scratch-and-sniff and lick-and-taste stamps. Switzerland had a chocolate-scented version, Britain a eucalyptus one, New Zealand a magnolia-smelling stamp and Hong Kong one that tasted of green tea. Britain has also produced a stamp with a hologram, and Switzerland a Braille stamp...
...feds are disrupting one of the great niche businesses. As a private banker at UBS, Birkenfeld traveled from his home in Switzerland to the U.S. to court ultra-wealthy American clients at tennis tournaments and art fairs. He would explain, among other things, how to buy jewels and artwork using funds from their secret Swiss bank accounts while they were overseas. Once, at the request of a client, he bought diamonds with money from an offshore account and smuggled them into the States in a toothpaste tube...
...former employee of the Liechtenstein bank LGT Group, owned by that Alpine nation's royal family. Other tax authorities piled on, including the IRS. In February, the IRS said it was investigating more than 100 Americans with bank accounts in Liechtenstein, a 15-mile-long country sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria, where financial services account for 30% of the economy, thanks to some of the world's tightest bank-secrecy laws. "It certainly has gotten a lot of people energized," says Michael McIntyre, a professor of law and an expert on international taxation at Wayne State University Law School...
Liechtenstein also figures in the UBS case. In addition to Birkenfeld, the Department of Justice has charged Mario Staggl, a banker in Liechtenstein, who remains in that country and at work. In his guilty plea, Birkenfeld said he, Staggl and others helped create sham entities in tax havens like Switzerland, Panama, the British Virgin Islands, Hong Kong and Liechtenstein to conceal the fact that U.S. citizens owned accounts. According to an agreement UBS and other banks signed with the U.S. government in 2001, UBS should have insisted its clients file ownership forms with the IRS but in many cases...