The politics of transparency in financial centres: anti-tax evasion and anti-money laundering efforts in the United Kingdom and Switzerland

Gronwald, Victoria (2024) The politics of transparency in financial centres: anti-tax evasion and anti-money laundering efforts in the United Kingdom and Switzerland. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis explores how financial centres engage with international tax and financial transparency standards. In light of increasing awareness of and global action against tax evasion and money laundering since the 2008 financial crisis, there is a need for understanding how to ensure financial centres and their financial and professional services industries comply with global transparency norms. The main objective of this research is to provide a better understanding of the main political struggles, promises and limits of two areas of the anti-tax evasion and anti-money laundering transnational legal orders: exchange of information between tax authorities and beneficial ownership transparency. It explores the recursive processes between global transparency norms and domestic lawmaking and interest group politics in the world’s two largest wealth manage-ment centres: Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The study is based on an analysis of almost 400 submissions to public consultations, parliamentary debates, and 39 qualitative interviews with experts and professionals from politics, private sector and civil society. The research shows that despite different approaches to global transparency developments – with the UK assuming a leadership role and Switzerland reacting mainly to international pressure – in both countries commercial considerations and the competitiveness of their financial industries prevail. Moral arguments are mainly mobilised to push back against transparency, with reference to the counter-values of privacy, data protection and confidentiality. Apart from the defence of privacy, the main political struggles about transparency occur across two axes: the politics of exclusion and the question what should be made transparent and what should not, and the politics of verification and the debate how to ensure data accuracy. Concerns around loopholes, unreliable data and weak enforcement demonstrate the persisting limits of transparency as a regulatory tool. The research contributes to literature on transnational legal orders and the recursivity of law and structural power theories.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Victoria Gronwald
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HG Finance J Political Science > JA Political science (General) J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) > JN101 Great Britain
Sets:	Departments > Sociology
Supervisor:	Savage, Mike and Summers, Andy
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4786

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