Germany turns up the heat on tax evaders

BERLIN (Reuters) – German officials hunting tax  evaders are negotiating to buy Swiss bank account data from a  whistleblower in France, a magazine reported yesterday, after  Berlin declared that banking secrecy was finished.

Munich-based Focus magazine said tax authorities would  acquire this weekend data on 1,500 German clients of a Swiss  bank, in an campaign which Switzerland’s president said yesterday risked encouraging a market for stolen goods.

Quoting sources close to the investigation, Focus said the  unnamed whistleblower had demanded a secret meeting in a  neighbouring country as he feared he would be arrested in  Germany and the data confiscated as illegally-obtained material.

The four officials were from the tax office in Wuppertal in  the state of North Rhine-Westphalia state which is leading the  current evasion investigation. A spokeswoman for the finance  ministry declined comment on the report in the newsweekly.

Despite protests from Switzerland, Germany has said it was  prepared to pay 2.5 million euros for the stolen data said to be  rich in detail about tax evaders that could, according to media  reports, yield at least 400 million euros in tax revenues.