Saving Austria's bank secrecy

The Italian judiciary revealed on Monday that the Italian mafia used 14 accounts at Austrian banks for money laundering purposes. The daily Die Presse calls for banking secrecy laws to be relaxed as a precautionary measure: "This tiresome affair will get the discussion about Austria's very strict and thus highly controversial banking secrecy regulations going again in Europe. The times have ended when people wearing dark sunglasses could enter an Austrian bank with a suitcase full of money and deposit it onto an account in the name of 'Donald Duck', but even without the anonymous accounts which made this possible the country is apparently still lucrative enough for people who have something to hide. This is not a political plus point for the country in times when the battle against money laundering has intensified. It would perhaps not be a bad idea to take off some of the pressure by implementing clever adaptations before the scandals caused by outsiders crank it up to such an extent that we are forced to have totally transparent accounts along German lines. After all, no one wants that to happen."

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