The US have cleared their positions with liechtenstein earlier on - US citizens could not use the same obscuring tactics that liechtenstein offered to the german pepper bags because of bilateral agreements.
In general I can see that US tax authorities have more of a punch then the germans.
Now that germany is awke, it will demand the same deal from liechtenstein.
I don’t see much changing. The 900 potential cases for the Germans, which might result in $1 billion in fines and previous taxes...might not be so easily won in court. The EU is strangely silent...and they might question paying off a guy for stolen data...which is from 2002.
The search warrants? Fascinating thing. The Germans know that thousands of folks have done the tax game since 2002...so they went and checked out the companies and lawyers in Germany who were fixing up the “foundations”, and are doing the search warrants first at their places (Frankfurt is amongst the big places). As for private home residences...well...they admit they are doing 20-25 search warrants per day...and it may take a month before they finish this (they started late last week). So you can figure that every one has shredded their documents over the weekend...companies and private individuals. So the cases are going to have limited resources...which the politicians really prefer (one would think).
How much is at stake? Smart German tax lawyers are now saying that $44 billion in income is hidden by Germans outside of the country, with Liechtenstein getting about $8 billion of this for their banks. Think about that amount of money...hidden away...and the big wigs in Germany refuse to admit it. They aren’t going to happily agree to any of this episode.
As for the guy who sold the CD with names? He is living in Australia, as we learned this week. And the Liechtenstein folks are looking for him. I’m guessing that some Russian mafia guys are hired and will be performing some payback. For other bank players who want to defraud Liechtenstein banks in the future...this guy will be made an example of...my humble bet. German press says the guy is asking for German protection and the BND hasn’t agreed to doing that part...they paid the $5 million and thats as far as they want to go.
The next shoe to fall that folks will be interested in....will be the 899 other names on the list. The German public expect politicians, singers, stars, soccer players, promi’s, and even TV moderators to be announced.