|
GENEVA - SWITZERLAND bristled on Wednesday at Germany's suggestion that the Alpine state should be placed on a blacklist of tax havens, with some saying that it is a veiled attempt at weakening the financial centre.
'The hatchet between Switzerland and its neighbours has once again been dug up,' Swiss daily Le Temps said on its front page after Germany made the suggestion during a meeting of 17 Western countries in Paris.
'They try to hit Switzerland, to weaken its economic centre,' said the centre-right party FDP, which was quoted by the newspaper.
Swiss German newspapers were particularly upset with German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, whose country had launched a massive tax evasion probe earlier this year that threatened to spill over from Liechtenstein to Switzerland.
'Switzerland should be on the blacklist and not the green list' of countries that do cooperate, he said on Tuesday during a meeting of countries from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Mr Steinbrueck's rhetoric is 'typical for a finance minister who has been overtaken by events' a spokesman of the far-right party SVP told Zurich-based daily Tages Anzeiger.
Another Zurich-based daily the Neue Zuercher Zeitung charged in an editorial that 'some political figures puff themselves up not only as saviours of banks during the financial crisis'.
'They try at the same time to make political capital out of it. The German finance minister Steinbrueck is one of these people,' it said.
According to Le Temps, Switzerland has nothing to fear.
'Switzerland, which has a veto right in the OECD, has nothing to worry about this new blacklist of tax havens,' it said. -- AFP
| 
