What is so special about Swiss banks?

Question

Why are Swiss bank accounts glamorized in movies?

Answer 1

It used to be that they had secrecy in banking
You could open a numbered account and the bank, (Under Law) could not give out the name of the account holder to anyone.
This allowed criminals to hide money.
Now a days, the law has been changed so that if a law enforecment agency has relative proof of illegal activity tied to the bank account, information will be made available to them.

Answer 2

They were famous to hide worldwide money laundering or the sort.

Now certain Carribean islands are the home to that sort of thing. Now, it's typical to hear about your Cayman island account.

It's not like a normal bank account - having a bank account would cost major unlike your $5-10 bank fee per month - look to $500 - 1000 per month to keep things quiet. It's also famous for situations like that not to actually give the money back. That's what what Noriega of Panama was famous for and how he bankrolled his campaign - through other people's laundered money.

This comes to the situation of if you had $100k in stolen money in your possession, what do you do with it? Since the FBI is looking for sums over $9.9k (a law since 1970's), putting it a safety deposit box is the best bet - look to pay again $500 a year for that size of a box?

Answer 3

One can set up a Swiss bank account without using your real name, just a number. The Swiss also do not make their bank records available to international police or foreign government investigators.