Showing posts with label agreement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agreement. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Indian Black Money

A t.v channel on Tuesday claimed that some Indian sounding names figure in the Swiss Bank secret accounts information which were handed over to Wiki Leaks founder Julian Assange by a former Swiss banker.

The channel, Headlines Today, showed a list purportedly containing names of the secret account holders in Julius Baer Bank and Trust Ltd, a Swiss Bank. The list was handed over by one of its former employees Rudolf Elmer to Assange.

The T.V channel showed the list purportedly containing Indian sounding names but made it clear that it could not independently confirm the genuineness of the identity of the account holders or whether they're Indians or not.

Citing the bank clients confidentiality that is guaranteed by the Swiss constitution, the Swiss government had prohibited UBS from complying with the Justice Department's demands and had threatened to seize UBS information to prevent the bank from handing accounts over to the Americans. Earlier this year, UBS had already released to the IRS the names of 250 suspected tax cheats and paid the U.S. government $780 million to avoid criminal prosecution for helping rich Americans hide $20 billion in undisclosed offshore accounts.

Under the terms of the new agreement, the IRS will submit a request to Swiss tax authorities to divulge within one year the names of clients suspected of stashing currency in UBS to evade U.S. taxes. Account holders will be notified before their names are disclosed plus will be able to appeal the decision in Switzerland's Federal Administrative Court. This approach, the Swiss government says, is in line with the existing law allowing the exchange of account information in cases of suspected criminal activity plus also complies with the newly signed double taxation treaty between the two countries, which stipulates that Switzerland will cooperate with the U.S. in inquiring in to suspected cases of tax evasion.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Risky Business

Fighting has the edge over negotiation as the first inclination of most people when faced with conflict. Our human brain chemistry lubricates the preference for warfare and the use of force, while negotiation, by contrast, requires a willed, determined and conscious effort. While there is little doubt that the latter mode of conflict management generally makes more sense, and may even be an essential skill set given the complexity of the issues we face as a species, negotiation remains largely underutilized and is not even widely taught or practiced outside of a narrow range of academic programs and dispute contexts.

In addition to neuro-biological priming, there often is also a long-standing and continuing deep-seated cultural resistance to negotiation, whether the controversy in question is geo-political, the allocation of scarce resources, the approach to sustainable development or environmental management, or a more mundane business, workplace or personal matter. Negotiation and, by extension, its first cousin mediation, do not spring to mind as the first considered alternatives. A good measure of this resistance is because the practice of negotiation remains haphazard and is often misunderstood and mischaracterized, even by practitioners.

Negotiation is most indicated in complex matters where the circumstances are most confused and ambiguous. This is where the simple answer is particularly alluring and often conceals the most diabolical unintended consequence. Negotiation is disliked just because it obligates the recognition that many issues are more complex than people would like to think and that there are no simple solutions, only options that sometimes range from bad to worse. Not surprisingly, any outcome negotiated is susceptible to second guessing and a negotiated agreement is frequently considered little more than a compromise of principle, “selling out,” or an outright appeasement. The more difficult the matter, the less likely the process is likely to result in the elegant “win-win,” non zero-sum game, many envision. Far from gourmet cooking, negotiation is more akin to making sausage.
Industrial Strainers
And, those who negotiate or mediate conflict are not left untainted by the suspicion of the process. While they often like to think of themselves as “peacemakers” and consider their work noble, few others see them that way. They are more likely to be cast ignobly as appeasers, who are weak, and sometimes even immoral and cowardly. (Benjamin, R.D., “Negotiation and Evil (1998),” in The Guerrilla Negotiator, Mediate.com, 2007). Most negotiators through out history, from Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna to former President Jimmy Carter”s recent involvement in the Israeli Palestinian discussions, have been vilified as much or more than they have been lauded for their efforts to settle conflicts.
Industrial Filters
Negotiation has garnered an especially ignominious reputation from the likes of Neville Chamberlain, the British Chancellor, who in 1938 negotiated with Hitler”s Third Reich on the eve of World War II an agreement that conceded to Germany the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in an effort to obtain “peace in our time.” Hitler broke the deal and, forever since, Chamberlain has been viewed as a naive dupe and his name used synonymously with appeasement. Most historians have concluded in hindsight, that anyone could have known Hitler could not be trusted. However, many other “scoundrels,” such as Soviet Premier Krushchev, Libyan President Omar Khadaffi, or even, after a fashion, Iraq”s Saddam Hussein, all originally deemed irrational and untrustworthy, have held to agreements they have negotiated, at least as often as the United States. Arguably, had Hitler upheld the agreement, Neville Chamberlain would now be viewed as a hero of sorts.
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