The totally anonymous “numbered Swiss bank account” much beloved by authors of crime fiction as the ultimate repository for hiding one’s ill-gotten gains may itself, have its days numbered. Rather than a last ditch effort to separate aging Nazis from their loot or Mafia dons from their drugs profits, the drive has simply been to stop the affluent from using Swiss accounts to hide their assets from national tax authorities.
The US Treasury has been in the vanguard of this initiative and some banks have fallen foul of the authorities by being directly implicated in schemes designed to defraud the tax man of his share. The latest development in this area is an accord between the Swiss authorities and the European Union which is designed to stop nations of the 28 EU member states from using Swiss banking secrecy to help them to evade taxes (cynics might point out that you need to be a major multi-national corporation to be allowed to evade tax, of course. EU investigations into state sponsored arrangements to enable such bodies to (how should we put this diplomatically?) minimise their taxation footprint, are still on-going).
Under the latest accord, the EU and the Swiss will exchange information about accounts held by their nationals from 2018 onwards. It is intended that this should prevent EU nationals from hiding their income in Swiss banks going forward. According to a statement from the EC: "This new transparency should not only improve member states' ability to track down and tackle tax evaders, but it should also act as a deterrent against hiding income and assets abroad to evade taxes". The EC is understood to be negotiating similar arrangements in other European tax haven nations such as Monaco, Andorra and Liechtenstein.