VATICAN CITY (RNS) The United States and Switzerland took a step toward a new ethical financial system advocated by Pope Benedict XVI in striking a deal this week over tax evasion, the official Vatican newspaper has said.
The two governments announced on Wednesday (Aug. 12) that they had reached an agreement over U.S demands for the identities of suspected tax evaders with money in secret Swiss bank accounts. Details of the deal were not disclosed, however.
“It is significant progress in the fight against tax evasion and (a move) in the direction of a better controlled financial system,” read an editorial in Thursday’s L’Osservatore Romano, which called the agreement “a step forward towards the ethical financial model described by Benedict XVI.”
In an encyclical published last month, Benedict blamed the financial world’s obsession with profit for the global economic crisis and called for ethical considerations to be given a stronger role.
The agreement ends a dispute over whether the Swiss bank UBS should be forced to disclose the names of 52,000 wealthy U.S. clients suspected of tax evasion.
