Tax Collector for the World

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 30, 2001 | by John Berlau

Brookes and other Florida bankers say they already are getting frantic calls from their Latin American depositors and say the proposal is preventing new foreign accounts from being opened. This is because some citizens of Latin American countries literally fear for their lives if their financial information is shared with their governments. Miriam Lopez, president and chief executive officer of Miami's TransAtlantic Bank, says there had been a surge of new accounts from Venezuelans anxious about the election as president of Hugo Chavez, a close friend of Cuba's Fidel Castro and of the Chinese government (see "Fidel's Successor in Latin America." April 30). Even in a relatively free country such as Colombia, Lopez says, her customers fear that terrorist gangs could get hold of financial information once the U.S. government supplies it. "In Colombia, you can be kidnapped and held for ransom for $30,000; forget about $1 million."

And Latin America isn't the only region where the IRS plans for data exchange could put human rights at risk. Increasingly, critics of the Chinese government, particularly those who live in Hong Kong, are putting some of their money in U.S. banks to avoid Beijing's watchful eye. "If those organizations [depositing in U.S. banks] are considered a political-opposition movement or potentially a political-opposition movement, then sharing their financial information with the Chinese secret-police gestapo would be very, very damaging and would jeopardize the survival of those organizations," says Ning Ye, a Chinese dissident living in exile in the United States who is president of the Free China Movement.