From: an15489@anon.penet.fi (Jack Daniels)
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 93 11:01:33 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Numbered Bank Accounts (Was "privacy and rights")
Message-ID: <9311181857.AA02801@anon.penet.fi>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>>
>> I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but to the best of my knowledge
>> Switzerland no longer allows numbered bank accounts.  Also, from
>> my studies of international banking, bank secrecy and tax havens,
>> I have never seen any reference to numbered bank accounts in
>> any country other than Switzerland, including Liechtenstein (although
>> Liechtenstein does have better secrecy safeguards than Switzerland.
>
>"Jack Daniels" has never looked hard enough -- many countries (Austria
>comes to mind) allow completely anonymous accounts, with various
>degrees of restriction on them.
>

"Perry Metzger" doesn't carefully read the postings which he directly
quotes before passing judgement.

I never claimed that nobody offers completely anonymous accounts.  I claimed
that, to the best of my knowledge, nobody offers the "numbered accounts" that 
used to be popular in Switzerland.  

Austria does offer "bearer share" accounts which are completely anonymous,
but are quite different than the "numbered accounts" of old-time Switzerland.
In a "numbered account", the owner uses a hand-written rendition of the account
number as a signature.  The hand-written number is compared against bank records
to validate the authenticity of the owner.  "Bearer share" accounts, which are
available in Austria, are issued to the user with some sort of ceritificate
of ownership.  Anyone (the "bearer") who has possession of the certificate 
("share") can withdraw money from the account.  No signatures or hand-writen
numbers are used to verify the owner.


If Austria does offer true numbered accounts, then I stand corrected.

"Jack Daniels"
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