Austria, Luxembourg and Switzerland said Friday they would relax their banking secrecy rules and comply with international standards on tax evasion probes, according to DPA. Switzerland would accept the standards of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said a statement on the finance ministry's website. Austrian Finance Minister Josef Proell told reporters in Vienna that national banks will exchange tax data about accounts held there with foreign regulators, but only in cases where there is grounds for suspicion. Opening data about an account will require strong documentation from a foreign regulator, said Proell, announcing the relaxation of the rules. Until now, such access has only been provided in cases where there is an ongoing investigation. A similar announcement was made by Luxembourg's ministry of treasury and budget. The Swiss statement said Bern, on a case by case basis, would exchange information as per requests of other countries, as given the globalization of financial markets, sharing data was important. Exchanges of information would only take place following changes to existing taxation agreements and negotiations on those charters would be handled bilaterally with other nations. Furthermore, the setup would preclude any so-called "fishing expeditions," meaning there would have to be proof of a tax offense for the Swiss to divulge client data. While banking secrecy was not intended to protect perpetrators of criminal tax offences, the privacy laws would remain intact, the ministry stressed. The Austrian minister also said his country's secrecy laws would not be changed. Until now, Switzerland has maintained a distinction between tax evasion and tax fraud, where only the latter was a criminal offense which warranted lifting banking secrecy. The three countries had met earlier this week and pledged to protect banking secrecy. Liechtenstein and Andorra announced similar plans on Thursday.
