Hamlet’s outburst at Ophelia to ‘get thee to a nunnery’ was intentionally ambiguous. In Elizabethan times a nunnery was either a convent or a brothel. Were the Danish Prince alive today, he could merrily get away with the same line aimed at Switzerland. What happened to the once VIP Escort Agency that, on its way to legitimacy, managed to skip the world’s standard hypocrisy, and within six years achieved a pose of pious humbug. ‘I knew the bride before she was a virgin’ could have been written across the Welcome Hall at Geneva Airport.

There is no need to relate the bawdy history of this mountainous paradise – it will suffice to mention the last century’s safe-haven for the loot of Nazi war criminals, and the recently exposed shenanigans of FIFA, football’s world governing body based in Switzerland (and led by a Swiss citizen – one of the most reviled people in the world not serving time for pedophilia or war crimes).

After telling the US back in 2009 that it would not allow UBS to release records of undeclared bank accounts, now, with all the zeal of the convert,  it is publishing lists of individuals subject to requests for information from other governments.

Switzerland has also joined the OECD’s global transparency initiative, according to which there will be automatic exchange of information without the need for a request from another country. And as for  that bust last month of seven FIFA officials in a Zurich hotel…..

Viewing all this from the comfort and security of my own lily-white country, Switzerland is less the zealous convert, and more the faceless (do you know the name of the Head of State?), small-time con who, when put under the swinging lamp, squeals loud and clear.

I wouldn’t trust Switzerland any further than the next US investigation. A leopard doesn’t change its spots – or at least not so fast. Switzerland is to be avoided, nay evaded, by individuals until such time as it settles down to some form of hypocritical normality like the rest of the world. In the field of corporate tax, on the other hand, where international populism has forced Switzerland into change,  the hypocrisy in offering new incentives to replace the old disgraced ones is Switzerland at its cheekiest best (or worst). Nothing to worry about there (other than the possibility that the rest of the world will get wise to them).

In the meantime, Switzerland will be feeling just a little more self-righteous – and deserving of the centuries-old honour of providing the Pope’s Swiss Guard.