31 Aug Raymond Eddé tells the birth of his baby: The Lebanese banking secrecy

Before writing this article, I searched the Internet for references to the chronology of the Lebanese banking secrecy birth, but I did not find anything about the period that preceded the tabling of the bill in parliament in 1954. To date I have not Read anything about it, surprisingly.

Therefore, it becomes of my duty to fix on paper, what Raymond Eddé told me spontaneously a few years before his death. Having taken no notes that day, nor later, I quote from memory what will follow:

At 34 years old in 1947, Raymond Eddé, a young lawyer, was traveling for business in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, visiting one of his clients. In the Lobby of the hotel, could be the Beau-Rivage, there were available on the reception desk to customers, brochures and commercial papers. Among them, a paper that praised the benefits of banking secrecy on the Swiss economy, and which claimed in addition, that:

“if Switzerland was spared during the Second World War, it was not related to its army, nor in relation to its mountains deemed impassable, but rather thanks to its banking secrecy”.

The future Amid of the National Bloc was taken aback by this assertion, and he slipped this narrow and slender paper into the pocket of his jacket, which he later used as a mark page, at the edge of the boat that took him back to Beirut.

The Book which accompanied him on his return journey secretly kept the mark page in his bowels for many years. He remained standing, silent, in the company of many other books, in the immediate vicinity of his owner in the library.

For the electoral campaign of the legislative of 1953, Raymond Eddé activated with all the energy that characterizes him, to prepare new ideas, in order to modernize the country. In search of a judicial notebook in his library, Al-Amid has taken in his hands the famous book, for no particular reason, and here is the mark page which is finally released, to contribute greatly to what has become a formidable engine of economic expansion in Lebanon.

The Amid shouted “Wajatouha” which means “Eureka”.

Raymond Edde was inspired by the Swiss law on banking secrecy to create “his own bank secrecy” as he used to say, but he wanted it more draconian. He introduced in the law, the prohibition to the military to lift the banking secrecy on the citizens bank accounts, even in case of state of emergency.

Raymond Eddé had asked in his preparatory work, the help of the Swiss Embassy in Beirut, which sent him the text of the law, as well as the jurisprudence and the legal literature of that time, which related thereto. The newly elected MP Eddé in 1953 introduced his bill in 1954. The text was adopted in parliament, not without difficulty, and promulgated by President Camille Chamoun in 1956.

In 1961, Raymond Eddé completed the law on bank secrecy by a law on the joint-account. The establishment of the bank secrecy in Lebanon has earned the Country the well-known designation:

Le Suisse de l’Orient!

To this day I still do not know how the Swiss banking secrecy spared my beautiful country the world war throes. But, if Mark Page said it, we shall trust him.

Elie Hanna