Well, thank you very much, Mr. Brandon.
I fought for this appropriation as an appropriator and a chair of this committee and am pleased with its allocation.
It really has to be around the ability to offer services and returns that are competitive.
I think you mentioned that some clients and some Swiss bankers were involved in some of these fraudulent transactions.
Why do people take money out of their countries of origin and invest in Switzerland?
So you determine compliance because they basically sign waivers and a W-9, which gets reported back to the IRS.
So the 238 accounts were determined fraudulent.
Why would a U.S. investor invest into a Swiss bank? What are the motivations?
Well, I have no further questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I agree, and that makes an awful lot of sense.
I want to understand a little bit about what is so different about the 230 accounts where we actually received the names...
So if U.S. investors have invested about $12 billion into Swiss banks, I mean, obviously that is a pretty small portion ...
So then what complicates that? Now we start talking about shell corporations.
Historically, let us go back. People around the world have deposited money into Swiss banks as a real safe haven.
Have you developed an estimate of how many dollars or how many Americans, how many dollars have Swiss bank accounts?
OK. In the morning hearing, what I was trying to establish was kind of the obvious in terms of, why does Switzerland hav...
What percent of the U.S.-based accounts or U.S.-owned accounts do you think that would reveal?
But that is going to require us to actually have knowledge that there may be some fraudulent activity occurring, correct...
