Sunday 17 February 2008

Germanation

The year just goes on getting more and more exciting. Not only did the private banker's favourite secret - the res non-dom - become part of the Daily Mail's lexicon last week, but now we have a new country in Europe, all the budding flowers in my ecological island have been wiped out by frost, and a British bank is to be run by Alistair Darling. How they have ended up nationalising the Rock after all these months of twittering... But there are plenty of others to commentate on that story this evening. I'm rather more fascinated by what is going on in Germany.

In case you haven't heard, the CEO of Deutsche Post, the exceedingly rich and delightfully named Mr Klaus Zumwinkel, has just resigned after allegations/confessions of tax evasion on a monumental scale. Somehow he has been channelling millions of euros through undeclared trusts in Lichtenstein. Was it all Mr Zumwinkel's own nefarious work, or should we detect the hand of an artful private banker getting creative on his behalf?

If so, said banker has been busy. Apparently, German prosecutors are building cases against 750 other people who have been up to the same Licht-trickery. I'll say that again: seven hundred and fifty people about to get done for the crime of retaining a private banker just a little too good at his job. Wasn't me, I can assure you, and I'm fairly sure no one in this office has been involved. But we will, no doubt, see.

One almost feels sorry for the Germans, what with the "lust trips" at VW (remember the 30,000 euro prostitute bills?) and the bribery and tax evasion scandals elsewhere. It does rather seem that the malaise cuts right to the heart of the establishment (Zumwinkel is a McKinsey man, after all). I have only a handful of German clients - they tend to stick to their own, and send all their money to Switzerland (or is it Lichtenstein?) - but I dare say we shall all be sharing in the economic fallout from this one.

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