Mark Curphey - SecurityBuddha.com

The Sunday Times had an intriguing story worthy of a spy novel this week.  In Europe we have three tax “friendly” (or unfriendly if you are a government)  regions. Monaco is the most famous and the home of many celebrities and sports stars. Andorra and Liechtenstein are the other two with Liechtenstein being a favourite place to hide money for the late “fat nasty piece of work” Robert Maxwell.

According to the article a suspected whistleblower accused of stealing data from the bank, was sacked and convicted of fraud. He then offered data to tax authorities in various countries in America, Canada, Australia, France and the UK. Germany has confirmed that they paid £3.2 million pounds (6.8 million US Dollars) for information on 755 wealthy Germans. The UK has paid £100,000. The informant has been given two new identities by the German Intelligence Services.

It was claimed in Liechtenstein that the source of the infamous DVD was 50-year-old Heinrich Kieber, a computer expert. He is a former employee of the LGT Group, a bank owned by Alois’s family, who had threatened to release sensitive bank data several years ago unless he was given a new identity to avoid prosecution in a separate case involving a property fraud.

The entire business of these tax havens is based not on trust but on privacy. That privacy is rooted in the trust of the employees. While sophisticated virtual vaulting may have made this harder I suspect no amount of technology will ever prevent these kind of situations. It’s people process and technology.