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a free meal donda hearty dot com. let's . say it's. so. billions of dollars are scraping from developing countries to financial safe havens in europe and secret bank accounts bogus companies and offshore zones are all in on the act of the mess it's that these compounds are using their very very traditional mis itself what we call money laundering what

sort of illicit schemes to presidents government ministers anonymous used to launder money how much money have they been able to talk away in secret bank accounts when i was five billion dollars mobarak with mr method at seventy billion the traces the dark fortunes and how can the bankers keep their reputations clean that's a legend of hollywood that we had had no role i know only most accounts since more than thirty years who compelled swiss bankers to disclose information about their clients will the infamous veil of privacy over the country's bank accounts finally be lifted for good. or.

bad. it. seems there is no backing in the house so maybe nobody is living in this building the sixteenth district of caris avenue for this is a quiet fashionable neighborhood. days nearby an excellent view of the eiffel tower can be seen from the window the inhabitants of these premises are no ordinary people and they prefer to keep a low profile so you can take pictures here why is that as these are embassy grounds. i don't always see ok them. as a matter of fact the building houses no diplomatic missions the dogs are simply trying to protect the president of the big shots staying there. and after this show nonprofit organization should often visits this neighborhood i mean you fest is also known as yet you have dictators because

a lot of african leaders and leaders in the word owns a building or an apartment on this avenue clare is not. the owner of the apartments appears to be in demand to who works here tell me that he's here like two three times a year so you know it's not here very very often so that's why it's pretty amazing that he's here right now. shelter activists investigate the shady financial deals of past and present political leaders across the world one of the more recent investigations concerned the money belonging to x. tunisian president ben ali had been taken out of tunisia and hidden and european bank accounts. and she knew zero itself the search for the next president's money began two days after he fled the country in january two thousand and eleven however should correct

this started investigating ben ali's finances long before the justin revolution according to the organizations estimates the x. president's family may be worth as much as five billion euros. swiss journalist mildred zaki has spent several years investigating the financial wheeling and dealing with some leaders of the world countries but even she only give a rough estimate of their fortunes in years when i was five billion dollars. we've estimated that seventy billion it was serious also that this tomatoes the telegraph . that's went up to one hundred twenty billion it is believed the family of the libyan leader is africa's richest the gadhafi clan keeps billions of dollars in bank accounts according to specialists from the international center for asset recovery all of libya's state run companies

have some links to the colonel's family. oil companies such as turmoil are the main asset even swiss customers know whose cattle like cars years. but belong to. libya most of the early shows with. its libyan oil the libyan leader entrusted his son the phantom bull with fiscal operations in europe and duffy jr subsequently booked himself into a plush hotel in geneva. because of president wilson it's a luxury very exclusive and beautiful hotel we have the biggest and the most expensive sears in the europe and only the richest people of the world can stay. in this you would have such clients like i read the president shakes more narcs oligarchs who. also was asked during his trips to switzerland for a mere fifty eight thousand euros a guest in this exclusive hotel gets

a presidential suite with expensive decorations in the finest taste customers that literally trade on gold now you can see the floor made of gold where in the restaurant lebanese this is our restaurant was lebanese cuisine was a very luxury design and very refined lebanese additional cuisine unpleasant incident that took place at this hotel in the summer of two thousand and eight solid relations between the alpine republic and libya for a long time on july the fifth swiss police detained from the group to duffy and his pregnant wife on a bill was charged with assaulting turned policeman asked for him to come down to the lobby. he didn't want to come so they waited for some time again they decided to go into the room so they went into. this situation

took arrested. swiss newspaper tribune indigenes printed pictures of both gadhafi jr under arrest and the hotel attendants that were attacked animal found lawsuits against the newspaper yet the biggest consequence of the incident for switzerland was libya's boycott of economic cooperation assume this crisis broke out between. libya that the leading authorities have withdrew withdrawn. a part at least or even the important part of the money that was a positive in the swiss banks gadhafi and switzerland have a political problem they fell out with each other so there's only five hundred million only in inverted commas five hundred million left in switzerland among pit professor at basel university has long been tracking money laundering methods in his view before civil war broke out gadhafi perceive themselves as libya's

omnipotent master. for that reason he didn't even bother to disguise the movement of billions of dollars a god awful he didn't spend all that much effort to hide the money it was pretty open most of this. like you have these thirty billion in the u.s. they were easily found because they were identified with gaddafi but in most cases leaders of developing countries resort to much more intricate nontransparent schemes as a rule the money goes around the world before landing in anonymous bank accounts in your. message to these people are using their very very traditional methods of what we call money laundering for instance found a company. an offshore company a letterbox company you have a british virgin islands company with

a fantasy name this company opens bank accounts for it in cyprus for instance and then you send the money from cyprus through the veil regulated big financial centers in london this eerie. or new york. of the from the very. very reassuring. that's why where we are working. this is phoebe she's the guardian of all the assets that we have still waiting of course the formal thing to do to get daniel jealous class works for the center for asset recovery he says investigating the financial nationalizations of x. heads of state takes the meticulousness of a good book keeper rather than the skills of an intelligence officer once you have found the money and the account you can start to confiscate the money but very often we have problems in finding where the money so in that situation

a country must do everything to trace and locate the assets in turn will tell its class hopes that investigating will become easier following the revolutionary tsunami in north africa. but evolution of the positive impact lead brings in a new government and the government is under pressure to act they cannot forget about the case in egypt now where millions of people again on the street the walls for follow up action and two days after the mubarak was arrested so it seems to be important but the civil society the population at large is also fighting for distrust trace the way the international center for asset recovery looks for the billions of dollars hidden in europe is organized as master classes for investigators from developing countries they are taught how to pinpoint traces of money which is vanished from national budgets. well would you make for more requests for example or is that money it was transferred into and then

a country that would do a move for legal assistance to that country with questing that is such a particle from shore of liberia has their positive x. in them or dollars in this particular bank in your country and we feel that this money is only going when you saw wanting to put a freeze on that money until quite recently money returning to its home country was the exception rather than the rule of bankers could only freeze suspicious accounts for a long time but they have no right to send money illicitly taken out of countries back to the national budgets without a request from the new governments or usually it's based on a request by the country. we do explain what we are doing a conference isn't there also we can explain what we can offer about the request as to call them from a country we don't not have the mandate to investigate on our own but many believe there's

a law passed in switzerland and early two thousand and eleven will make it possible to change the situation in a significant way already there is talk of the notorious flail of banking secrecy being lifted altogether which is something the swiss bankers are always been proud of people awaiting the onset of a new era and age of total financial transparency. culture is the same i understand my colleague from the woman from the bank would be at least five years in the market or on drugs has been declared a failure the us government has spent more than two point five trillion dollars

fighting this campaign over the past forty. i'm. always aware mysteries are valuable. she booked out the entire hotel he stayed in

an enormous room. other rooms were occupied by his servants and bodyguards. your lambda the chambermaid at this last show tell had no idea who the amicable and polite man really was they completely took over the hotel for a month to get on the agenda. i sometimes came across him in the corridor. she always said hello and in general he was a very nice if he was a generous well managed client well i'm young and we got double pay for that one. katy's ex take tater claude duvalier was the occupants of those fashionable premises with an excellent view of a nearby lake investigators put the sum of money he took out of the country and hundreds of millions of dollars. chose the day it was born in haiti and one hundred sixty five he had to leave his country but he has vivid memories of the regime and the valley

a family established on the island. in nineteen. fifty five seven. years and it gave to us it was. after and. against. there were for a position and it was very very dangerous to live in france was a valley a ruled the poorest country in the western hemisphere from one nine hundred fifty seven to nine hundred seventy one he fostered an atmosphere of fear and repression on the island moreover. invented a scheme has enabled his family to amass a fabulous fortune over the course of nearly two decades devalue a senior masterminded the so-called presidential foundation haitian businesswoman with cutie brown to contribute to it according to the area's estimates the foundation grew by three million dollars each year after the death of friends who

are duvalier popularly known as papa doc his son john claude duvalier took his place baby doc pursued his father's policies in all spheres including the financial one. their money we're talking about now in switzerland is the money belonging to sunday's an initiative. which was opened by the by the mother of baby doc and the wife of. and these familiar foundation. bones the money of the family and the foundation simply a bank account in switzerland that's it's a was a bank transfer laundering money under duvalier a was much easier than it is today in need of bogus firms nor numerous money transfers were necessary money from the state treasury and that received from other countries assume on a tarion a it was transferred to a foundation opened by members of the family of the head of state from that it went

to europe. the account was not. in between is that we've heard a year. older is the foundation called foundation however it was clear to everyone the real. value family. in the one nine hundred eighty six two duvalle had to flee to europe then he shared his time between paris and a fashionable hotel on the border with switzerland he made several unsuccessful attempts to get access to the multi-million fortunes in norway in swiss banks since the early so you thousands switzerland has been vigorously trying to rid itself of the image of a country whose financial institutions always welcome money without questioning its origin that's a legend of hollywood. and we had had no.

accounts since more than thirty years what we have is that we have what we call a number account which part kept your name inside the bank the employee don't see the name of the client but you can not all count in switzerland without giving your passport your region of the thousand and there is no anonymity pyramid or a bull enjoys a good deal of frustration switzerland's banking community some time ago he owned the bank he says the pressure experienced by his colleagues in the past few years is purely a part tough business competition and so he is and is very simple is that we are in a business which is profitable and today people who wants to take market share of a profitable business and i make are. not just anglo-saxon america especially always like to up by us lol outsider. united states does x.

. devalue a family money was frozen in bank accounts for nearly a quarter of a century the swiss would dearly like to give the billions back to the people of haiti but under a law that was still in force until recently they couldn't do so without an official request from the new government to the item country and you know came into effect in early two thousand and eleven journalists have dubbed it the desire act. now politicians and big time businessman will find it difficult to work on accounts and swiss banks the procedure is now much more complicated because presidents government ministers and monarchs belong to a group of so-called politically exposed persons top foreign clients can be denied banking services all together so if it's the president of the palomar and if it's head of a big public company we will not do business with us as

a matter of fact ordinary people as well as acts take taters will now have to worry about the confidentiality of their bank accounts in january two thousand and eleven rudolf elmer gave two discs to julian assange on the disks contained information on the bank accounts of several thousand customers it was suggested that the people mentioned on the disks were dodging taxes but they want to do it and they go it quickly like that again basically. in order to thank god it's investigating and making a decision on a elmos actions of course and face to face with a swiss court of law the former bank employee may face serious prison time for releasing the confidential data. one of the journalists investigating theft the secret banking information is yen's brown bush of the financial times the first scandal of this kind broke in germany in two

thousand and seven the german government had acquired a disk from anonymous individuals it contained information about germans hiding their money in foreign bank accounts to avoid paying taxes in germany. there were seven hundred or seven hundred seventy german names on it some of them had to go to court all of them had to pay money back in the year two thousand and eight the german state because of this more than one billion of europe. such actions drew a mixed response in germany bankers didn't mince their words saying the german government's behavior was no better than that of steve's. i find it to shame and a scandal that german a theory t. get away with using the possession of stolen goods you know in switzerland if you steal good and then you sell it you go to jail it's

a kind switzerland's famous reputation for banks from secrecy that come under attack a few months before that u.s. authorities had pressurized u.b.s. into releasing information about the accounts of thousands of its american customers they were suspected of tax evasion in their home country when did. you think the problem is not two thousand i. and it had been ten years that respect exists it had been eroding actively that had been. dealt performed by anglo-saxon trusts the journalist minute zacky maintains that banks have been compelled to more open to the public the fact is that the swiss banking system is losing an undeclared war with anglo-saxon financial institutions the fight with bank accounts for the shady past is only an excuse that anglo saxons have killed the swiss in order to prosper themselves on the tax evasion market you know how

much is the market how much money is in it thirteen trillion thirteen thousand billion. i'm declared not world like it's no longer else with spectacles. a journalist from the french magazine l'express feels the chain of revolutions in north africa is only just picking up street he's expecting me well even if it's in the center of the confidence of a stolen funks. maybe it would be the case one day like. the recently our other countries you know tunisia two years ago or one year ago was not a democracy it was a i thought that one day we would be able to work normally in the it. was according to should put activists real to selling real estate and what is known as the dictator's avenue in

a prestigious part of paris will experience no drop in the numbers of clients. the schemes used by some leaders of third world countries to hide in the billions of dollars will simply become more intricate. there is still a long way to go before the end of this international bust up about big money. will. bring you the latest in science and technology from the realm of russia.

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