I WAS livid and still incensed at the shocking fiction of a man who lives in Germany by the name of Andre Brandli who says he has Guyanese blood. People hardly know this gentleman but he bad-mouths the Government of Guyana relentlessly. There are three strands to his political scandalisation.

One is that the 2020 election results should not stand because it was marred by a bloated list in which over 600,000 voted. No one in Guyana, including the PNC, AFC and ACDA has claimed that over 600,000 persons voted in 2020. Two- Brandli is part of that group that believes Guyana should get out of oil because of climate change. Three – he thinks Guyana is saddled with the disaster of racial divisions.

I have criticised the political nonsense Dr. Brandli has written about this country in several columns in the past but his latest letter is highly repugnant. In what I find to be one of the more barefaced expressions of hypocrisy, Dr. Brandli offered his country of birth as an example for Guyana to follow to help dissolve racial polarisation. And which country is that? Switzerland.

Dr. Brandli can’t be that silly not to know that when he proffered his country as an example, readers in Guyana will google Switzerland to see if should be a standard bearer for Guyana. Switzerland is the least racially tolerant country in Western Europe. Switzerland has more racial divisions than Guyana. In Guyana, no ethnic group is targeted by the security forces for the infliction of violence. This is the opposite in Switzerland where Africans face systemic racist violence by the police. It is incredibly barefaced for Brandli to suggest we can learn from Switzerland.

Brandli goes on to inform readers that Switzerland has a sound economy based on its economic rise in the 19th century. That economic buoyancy came through extensive and prodigious corruption in banking. Switzerland’s economy for most of the 20th century rested on the secret holdings of trillions of dollars which came through money-laundering, blood money and the illegal assets of post-colonial dictators. Switzerland has the most secret banking laws of all countries in the world and the reason is obvious – it thrives on illegal assets that it holds in its banking vaults.

Brandli has the temerity to offer Switzerland as a democratic model for Guyana when Guyana has a more transparent financial system than Switzerland. If any political party in power in Guyana should ever draft legislation to make banking as secretive as it is in Switzerland then all hell would break loose.

How did Switzerland come to build up a sound economy through corrupt banking without coming under the microscope of the dominant Western powers after the Second World War whereas, after decolonisation, the economies of Third World countries came under intense scrutiny by the EU and the Americans?

The answer lies in the factor of race in international relations, a subject our scholar, presidential adviser, Professor Randy Persaud has published two books on. You see what happened is that Switzerland was viewed (still is) as part of the White world and Western countries saw no interest in investigating it for corrupt international financial arrangements while the Third World was not given this special treatment.

The secretive banking corruption of Switzerland began to crack after the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. President Bush to track down the financing of terrorism turned his attention to Switzerland where a labyrinthine system of banking protected corrupt money that went into financing terrorism.

In 2008, whistleblower, Herve Falciani, put the spotlight on Swiss banks holding illegal money. The Swiss branch of HSBC had to pay the US a fine of $1.26 billion for holding undeclared assets of wealthy Americans. In 2015, Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS came under US sanctions.

For a small country of 9 million people, Switzerland has per capita the largest amount of banks in the world. The reason for this was that the banking system fed the economy and the banking system thrived on holding dirty money. Brandli wrote that Switzerland is one of the most prosperous countries in the world but stop short of telling us how it became so wealthy. He also did not tell us that for a country that is one of the most prosperous in the world, how much of that wealth, if any, is given to poor countries.

Switzerland stays out of the European Union because it cannot risk its banking system to come under the scrutiny of the anti-money laundering regulations of the EU. Years ago I wrote that Switzerland is a rogue nation. I still believe so. Switzerland is no democratic standard bearer for Guyana.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.