By Solly Rakgomo | From  Mmegi Online

Arguably Switzerland has one of the best banking systems in the world and this unique system has attracted to that country’s banks a chunk of global foreign financial lodgement, but unfortunately over the years, large numbers of depositors included people with dubious sources of wealth especially from Africa.

For more than half a century the Alpine nation of Switzerland has built a reputation as the world’s centre for tax evasion, fraud, money laundering, racketeering, save haven and above all a staunch ally of corrupt African leaders and a great beneficiary of third world corruption.

The often perceived neutral country in Europe is a haven for a quarter of the world stolen money.

This has been safely guarded by its ultra-secret banking law enacted in 1934 which makes the disclosures of client identity a crime.

Various categories of people including popes, presidents, prime ministers, corrupt dictators, wealthy business, drug dealers have all used and benefited from the banking secrecy laws  of Switzerland, as a result her economy has been described  in various terms as  an underground economy, a deposit box  for dirty money and dirty driven economy.

One of my all-time favourite African scholars, political activist and a fearless anti-corruption campaigner Lord Aikins Adusei lamented that of all victims of Swiss banking secrecy laws and shady banking practices developing countries in Africa in particular seem to have suffered the most.

The global infrastructure of international banking secrecy with headquarters in Switzerland has helped bleed trillions of dollars in illicitly generated money out of Africa.

According to a report from the Global Financial Integrity, total illicit outflows from Africa between 1970 to 2008 may be as high as $1.8 trillion.

Read more at Mmegi Online

*Solly Rakgomo is an international relations student