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RSS 2.0Wednesday, October 15, 2008
sour grapes?
Somebody is stepping way out of line: Liechtenstein prince calls Germany ‘Fourth Reich’
he Prince of Liechtenstein, Hans-Adam II, has labelled Germany “the Fourth Reich” amid a dispute with Berlin over efforts to hinder tax evasion in the tiny Alpine statelet.
The tiny Alpine principality of Liechtenstein has already suffered through “three German Reichs” in the last two centuries, he told Swiss daily Tages-Anzeiger on Thursday, adding that the country hoped to survive the fourth.
His comments were included in a letter to the Jewish Museum in Berlin that explained why Liechtenstein no longer wanted to loan artwork to Germany. The prince wrote that his country did not want to expose its art collection to selective use by the German state.
It looks like the prince is royally ticked off about somebody leaking files of LGT bank exposing tax evaders to German intelligence, which ended up being shared with nations far and wide. If Wikipedia is to be believed, “LGT (Liechtenstein Global Trust[citation needed]) is the private banking group of the princely House of Liechtenstein.” This would explain why prince is so upset—the scandal, PR, and increased scrutiny has probably lost LGT (and therefore himself) a lot of customers and assets, and like a spoiled brat he’s not sharing his toys anymore.
Salomon Korn of the Central Jewish Council in Germany told the Tages-Anzeiger that the prince’s remarks were “totally absurd.”
“The prince belittles the crimes of the Nazis by putting the (current) Federal Republic on the same level as the Third Reich,” the 1933-45 period when dictator Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party were in power, he said.
Good for Mr. Korn. Tough luck that the Prince’s tax cheats got exposed by the score and fell over themselves turning themselves in before they were roped in and that the scandal was a blow to one of his businesses (is there any other business in Liechtenstein other than banking?), but it’s beyond the pale to compare getting busted with the atrocities of the Third Reich.
By the way, when I was working in Switzerland years and years ago, one of my accounts was another bank in Liechtenstein which ran the market data platform of the company I worked for. It was the only pure IBM shop I’ve ever seen and their network was melting down. Small wonder they had issues with the market data software. I’m trying to remember how large Liechtenstein is. It’s a bit of a walk from one end to the other, but only a few minutes by car.
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Tags: germany, liechtenstein, tax evasion, wanker
