Summary
21 August 2009
The US and Switzerland have signed an agreement designed to end a tax evasion dispute over the Swiss banking giant, UBS. Under the agreement UBS will hand to the US tax authorities the names of clients suspected of evading American tax laws.
Reporter:
Mark Gregory
Switzerland's financial giant UBS
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Report
Last year UBS admitted helping wealthy Americans evade tax, using methods such as hiding valuable diamonds in tubes of toothpaste. Since then the US authorities have been pressing the Swiss banking giant to reveal the names of 52,000 further accounts.
But UBS said it was unable to comply because that would entail breaking Switzerland's strict bank secrecy laws. In a final settlement, the Swiss authorities have now agreed in effect to allow UBS to disclose details of 4,500 accounts to the US government.
The deal also provides a general formula for ending long-running tensions between the two countries over tax.
Mark Gregory, 大象传媒 News
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Vocabulary
- admitted
if you admit something or doing something (usually illegal, bad or undesirable), you unwillingly accept that it is true
- evade tax
knowingly fail to declare the full value of your wealth in order to pay less tax
- pressing the Swiss banking giant to reveal
here, persuading/forcing UBS to make known, or disclose - see below (here, giant means a very big institution)
- was unable to comply
could not do as they were told
- entail breaking
result in disobeying, or failing to keep
- strict bank secrecy laws
when the power of law totally forbids banks to give away any information about their accounts or account holders
- settlement
deal, agreement
- to disclose
to make known, to reveal - see above
- a general formula
a standard, mutually agreed way
- long-running tensions
disagreements that continue for a long time
