Prying open privacy

Financial wherewithal was not a quality Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran naturally inherited; his father was a gambling addict who was imprisoned for embezzlement. But given his penchant for priceless wisdom, perhaps the Lebanese banking system would be sage to heed of one of Gibran’s most famous sayings: “If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.”  Lebanon’s financial sector has long relied on the country’s banking secrecy laws, some of the toughest in the Middle East, and the country has, for decades, encouraged the powerful and affluent from across the region to use it as a safe house for capital. Yet, despite Gibran’s warning, word has gotten out and awoken some altogether more powerful beasts, with Western countries claiming Lebanon’s secrecy laws help their citizens avoid tax. Recent events, both in Lebanon and internationally, suggest those countries will look