Compulsion Over Comity: The United States' Assault on Foreign Bank Secrecy

Because of their physical proximities and tory secrecy laws, many nations have become bank secrecy havens, providing financial services and anonymity to people and business enterprises, both legitimate and illegitimate. In response, U.S. courts have systematically circumvented almost any challenge to the authority of our prosecutors and judicial procedures presented by nations that respect and uphold financial privacy. Unfortunately, efforts by other branches of the United States government to ease the friction created by the courts have proved to be only moderately effective and remain essentially unrecognized by the judiciary.