Quote of the day – Swiss whitewash

From John Gapper in the Financial Times:

“In the past, the Swiss private banking industry operated very differently to the way it does today,” HSBC said this week in its mea culpa. Perhaps so, but I recall Swiss banks claiming in the mid-1990s — a decade before this happened — that tax evasion was in the past. After a while, one stops believing.”

Read our lips: Swiss banking secrecy is alive and well.