Canada is trying to obtain the names of suspected tax avoiders with accounts in Switzerland. Why is France involved in this process? This is because a Swiss court ruled on Friday that it was illegal for a financial regulator to have ordered UBS last year to hand over the files of nearly 300 clients to U.S. officials. So Canada turned to France because France has a list of 3,000 names of people with Swiss accounts that France obtained last year includes Canadians.

 

According to Reuters, revenue Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn said he is confident France will respond favorably to a request that Ottawa will make that it share information it has on Canadians with accounts in Switzerland. "I do not know the numbers, but my feeling is there will be many Canadians who will be on this list," Blackburn told reporters on a conference call. "If I were a Canadian who had utilized tax havens in Switzerland .. I wouldn't wait for us to catch them because it will be too late ... If they want to save their reputation, if they want to sleep well, they should call us and utilize the voluntary disclosure (option)," he said.

 

The French list includes client data stolen by an ex-employee of HSBC's offshore banking headquarters in Geneva, as well as other banks.