Swiss banks have once again demonstrated that they are ready to work only with the wealthy clients. In particular, the largest banking groups in Switzerland have started closing foreign customers’ accounts. Such a sanction is imposed on the banking accounts with the balance less than 5 million US dollars. If the client does not agree with such approach, he must pay a fixed monthly fee for the banking account services. The average fee amounts to about 1 thousand Swiss francs per month.
It should be noted that earlier such measures were applied to the banking accounts with the assets less than 3 million US dollars. Many customers were notified by mail. Written notifications were sent to the addresses of the post office boxes in Switzerland. And since not everyone checked these post office boxes, closing of accounts has become an unpleasant surprise for many clients. As a result, the owners of the banking accounts in Switzerland also had to pay the monthly fee.
Unfortunately, today closing bank accounts have become common for many international banking institutions. International entrepreneurs consider such actions of banks as heavily impeding doing business.
Sanction list of Swiss banks is growing
The problems with closing banking accounts have affected various clients. It is known, that earlier Swiss banking groups have closed the accounts owned by the clients from countries, which were hit by economic sanctions. Representatives of the banks claim, that such measures help to reduce the existing risks and allow focusing on serving more wealthy clients.
In addition to the fact that the closure of banking accounts has already started, bankers keep a wary eye on observance of the norms of the international law in terms of government currency exchange regulation and activity of foreign companies. This state of things affected the existing business. Thus, many banking institutions of Switzerland allow replenishing banking accounts only under the condition of fulfilling the numerous various requirements.
According to international experts, the only way out of this situation is the incorporation of an international company and a corporate banking account in a foreign banking institution. The current restrictions, associated with the government currency exchange regulation, do not apply to such accounts.
However, there are some adverse effects, if an individual is a tax resident of a particular country, such a legal entity may be recognized to be the company controlled from abroad. Accordingly, the owner is obliged to notify the public authorities, pay taxes and submit financial reporting in accordance with the applicable law.
This problem can be avoided by acquiring the status of a tax resident of another country.
