The decision ends a month-long public fight between two of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies that sparked political concerns on both sides of Atlantic over jobs and corporate tax maneuvers.

Our US correspondents have raised the question of corporate taxes.  Clearly part of Pfizer’s interest in this merger is to move its headquarters to gain tax advantages.  Over and over we see American companies, who did 80 per cent of their business in the US, locating headquarters in countries that offer tax relief.

Is it time to ask whether we should remove corporate taxes altogether and just tax dividends.  Pressure to make the company look good often leads to these tax-motivated moves.  If taxes were not part of this calculation, would the government get more revenue of the holders of a company’s equity?  Worth asking, we think.

Our correspondent Andreas Frank writes:  US Attorney General Eric Holder met with Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, his counterpart from Switzerland, as investigators cracked down on Swiss banks that help US customers avoid paying taxes.

Widmer-Schlumpf was accompanied by State Secretary Jacques de Watteville as well as representatives of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the Federal Department of Justice and Police. The talks with Mr. Holder focused on the current US programme to settle the tax dispute for category 2, 3 and 4 banks, as well as the ongoing US criminal investigations concerning category 1 banks domiciled in Switzerland.

Switzerland is committed to ensuring with the US authorities a fair and balanced procedure in accordance with the principle of proportionality in order to prevent Swiss banks from being treated worse than other banks.

US officials were tight-lipped about the content of the meeting between Holder and Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, but confirmed that the US probe into the Credit Suisse bank was discussed.

The day the Swiss negotiated with the DOJ “a fair and balanced treatment of Credit Swiss”, Switzerland added 15 individuals to a list of people who are subject to business restrictions and travel bans because of their involvement with the crisis in Ukraine, a move that follows the expansion of European Union sanctions.

Swiss authorities said financial institutions in the Alpine country could no longer do business with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, Russian military head Valery Gerasimov and the leaders of separatist groups that have seized buildings in eastern Ukrainian. The expansion means 48 people are now subject to restrictions.

Europe and the U.S. announced new sanctions in late April in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. EU sanctions focus on individuals but U.S. sanctions also target banks and other companies.

The Swiss announcement is a reversal of the Swiss Federal Council’s March 26 decision not to impose sanctions against Russia for its seizure of Crimea, claiming it wanted to find a “balance” between international law and Switzerland’s interests.

It is obvious that pledges given by the DOJ to the Swiss in the Credit Swiss case tipped the balance in favour of Switzerland joining the EU sanctions.

Credit Suisse AG has pleaded guilty to helping wealthy Americans evade taxes in offshore havens, and the Swiss bank has agreed to pay U.S. authorities $2.6 billion in penalties, the Justice Department has announced.

For the big banks, these fines are simply the cost of doing business.

Attorney General Eric Holder told a news conference in Washington on Monday that the Swiss bank had “engaged in an extensive and wide-ranging conspiracy … to help tax cheats dodge U.S. taxes.”

Holder said the conspiracy spanned decades and involved bank employees destroying records in an effort to hide the truth and that the destruction of evidence continued after the Justice Department launched its investigation in 2010.

The conspiracy charge was filed in a criminal information, which is a charging document that can only be filed with a defendant’s consent and which typically signals a guilty plea.  The penalties will be paid to the Justice Department and to regulators.  Citing an unnamed source, The Wall Street Journal says that Credit Suisse’s Dougan and Chairman Urs Rohner will retain their jobs as part of the settlement.

Credit Suisse is not the first bank to make such a settlement. In 2009, UBS agreed to pay $780 million to U.S. authorities and to identify the names of its U.S. account holders. In 2013, Switzerland’s Wegelin & Co. paid $57.8 billion after pleading guilty to aiding tax evasion.

Our correspondent Andreas Frank writes:  A Miami man has been arrested in an unprecedented money-laundering case that alleges some part of $238 million gained from Medicare fraud was secretly pumped into the Cuban banking system.  Caribbean Transfers. is suspected of bankrolling a Florida check-cashing business that prosecutors say cashed checks for Medicare fraud offenders and transferred the dirty dollars through Canada to Cuba.

The revised indictment alleges that as much as $238 million in stolen Medicare proceeds were laundered in the scheme, but it does not say how much was believed to have ended up in Cuba’s national bank. The indictment further alleges that the Perez brothers laundered some of those dollars through Caribbean Transfers’ bank accounts in Canada and other locations.

The initial indictment, which made national headlines, alleged that $70 million in tainted Medicare profits were laundered by 70 healthcare operators through the Naples check-cashing business of Oscar L. Sanchez, who has pleaded guilty and is serving a 4 ½-year prison sentence.

Prosecutor Ron Davidson has alleged that about half of that amount was transferred through Canada into Cuba, and described Caribbean Transfers as a sort of offshore Western Union. The company, which closed its doors in 2012, claimed it specialized in remittances to Cuba, the Dominican Republic and other countries.

Caribbean Transfers, meanwhile, has claimed that it did nothing wrong but acknowledged that money from the Medicare fraud had “contaminated” its legitimate remittances to the island.

Caribbean Transfers has not identified the remittance company, but sources close to the investigation say it was La Bamba, which also cashed checks. La Bamba owner Juan René Caro is serving 18 years in prison for making false reports of money transfers.

Caribbean Transfers said it does not operate in the United States, but added that the money from the Miami remittance company “contaminated” its own legal transfers of money to the island.

“Our company does not steal, does not defraud and does not move the money of fraudsters to Cuba. What we do is to transfer the money of families to Cuba,” the statement said. “You can ask the more than 150,000 clients who have received our service of remittances to Cuba if at any time they have not received the assistance that is sent to them.”

The statement said that the documentation needed to prove that the accusations against Jorge Perez de Morales are false is being prepared and that it will be presented “before the proper authorities” when it is ready.

Lucy P. Marcus writes:  There is a real danger that corporate leaders, making decisions that seem correct behind closed doors, end up being tone-deaf in a soundproof room. It is clear that board members are often deeply disconnected from the world’s economic and social realities.
Consider executive pay packages. Board remuneration committees can explain them logically with complex formulas to justify them, and yet often they are completely out of line with common sense.
Board members need to rethink what they are doing in those rooms, and here individual directors’ guiding principle should be the “veil of ignorance” proposed by the political philosopher John Rawls in his 1971 treatise A Theory of Justice. Rawls proposed the veil of ignorance as a way to derive principles of social justice to which anyone who did not know in advance their identity and position in society would consent.
How would the veil of ignorance work in a boardroom? Board directors’ role is not simply to ensure return on investment; it is also to make decisions with due consideration for the community, employees, suppliers, consumers, and even the overall economy. The decisions made in that room have an impact beyond the company, so it is not just shareholders who hold board members accountable for their choices.
In order for board directors and senior executives to make judicious decisions, they cannot think only about whether they will directly benefit. As in Rawls, if we imagined that we did not know who we are or where we stand in society – whether we are rich or poor, male or female, young or old, CEO or shop-floor worker – our decisions would be more ethically grounded. The veil of ignorance changes the nature of the discussion on almost every issue, from executive pay, wage discrepancies, and working conditions to long-term strategy, succession planning, and much more.
Many issues that should be viewed through the veil of ignorance fall into the categories of environmental sustainability, social equity, and corporate governance. For example, if we didn’t know whether we would be working long days at a fast-food counter or overseeing the entire organization, we would think differently about compensation structures and the ever increasing gap between the most senior management and the most junior staff members. If we didn’t know whether we would be working on a factory floor in Bangladesh or in a shiny head office in the United States, no one would disavow responsibility for the health and safety of Bangladeshi workers.
The list goes on. If board members were making choices from behind the veil of ignorance –not knowing their position in the company – they would want everyone to have opportunities to implement change or be entrepreneurial. Not knowing whether they were male or female, they would ensure pay equity and better policies concerning parental leave and child care.
Likewise, knowing that they might be the customer would make them look differently at cost-cutting measures that weaken product testing and consumer protection. If they believed that they might live in a community affected by an oil spill, they would want robust, not minimal, environmental safety standards, and they would not seek to circumvent the rules.
There is a danger of taking this thought experiment too far. Getting caught up in factoring in all of the different perspectives would cause decision-making to gravitate toward the lowest common denominator, with outcomes that achieve very little for anyone. That is not the point. The point is to step outside of one’s comfort zones, distance oneself from the voices around the table that sound just like one’s own, and remember that board members are responsible for the direct and indirect impact of their decisions.
There is no doubting corporate directors’ responsibility for the growth and success of the company. But that responsibility also requires being thoughtful individuals who can see the bigger picture. Investors are more attuned than ever to companies’ social and environmental impact, and they are increasingly concerned about whether the companies in their portfolios are good corporate citizens.
If directors remind themselves each time they enter the boardroom why they are there, and pause for a moment to consider how their views would be affected if they did not know who they were, they would make better decisions for the company and for the entire system in which it operates. In this sense – and only this sense – ignorance in the boardroom is the right approach.

In a few weeks, Thai diplomats and officials will be hard pressed to explain the kind of progress, if any, the country has made in addressing the issue of human trafficking.  A United States government report, on the Trafficking In Persons (TIP), could potentially affect bilateral relations between Thailand and the US and will be released next month.

US law requires that its State Department rate nations across the world with regard to human trafficking. Countries rated in tier one fully meet minimum standards while tier two nations do not meet the minimum standards but are making an effort.

Tier three countries, on the other hand, do not meet the standards and are not showing any signs of trying to make a meaningful effort. What concerns many Thai officials is that tier three countries, which could very well include Thailand, face the threat of sanctions by the US government.

At the discretion of the US president, Thailand has received a waiver from such punishment and allowed to remain in tier two for past two years. But time is up and Thailand is hard pressed to show that progress has been made.  Judging from the previous report, in which Thailand was accused of slow progress in prosecuting trafficking-related cases, there is a real chance that the country could be rated down.

A few days ago, a US Congressional panel reminded us how bad Thailand’s performance and image is with respect to poor treatment of the Rohingya. The hearing in Washington DC was on “Effective Accountability: Tier Rankings in the Fight against Human Trafficking Lessons”.

Representative Chris Smith, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organisa-tions, listened to testimonies about how Thai government officials were involved in the trafficking of Rohingya.  Smith is not just another lawmaker. He is the author of the landmark law, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, that created this three-tier system of reward and punishment for countries that do not comply with the requirements.