A Swiss financial advisor has been charged in the United States with conspiring to hide $184 million (SFr150.5 million) from US tax authorities.
This content was published on
1 minute
swissinfo.ch and agencies
In a statement on Thursday, the Department of Justice (DoJ) said the Zurich-based man, 57, had conspired to help more than 60 US clients conceal assets from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) between 1998 and 2009.
According to the charges filed in a New York court, the man created sham foundations and corporations in third-country jurisdictions including Hong Kong and Liechtenstein to conceal his clients’ ownership of Swiss bank accounts.
Furthermore, upon discovery in 2008 that UBS bank was under investigation by the IRS, the man helped his US clients move their accounts to other Swiss banks which did not have a physical office or presence in the US, the DoJ said.
If found guilty of the conspiracy charge, the man faces a maximum five year prison term and fines.
The DoJ did not specify in its statement how it intended to compel the man to face the charges in the US.
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
Credit Suisse in sights of US tax probe
This content was published on
Investigators have now escalated the probe and are attempting to implicate the bank in hiding some $3 billion (SFr2.46 billion) of client assets from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). They must prove that the bank’s hierarchy sanctioned staff actions before client data can be demanded in a re-run of the UBS case two years ago.…
This content was published on
In an interview with swissinfo.ch, Pascal Saint-Amans, head of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information of Tax Purposes, praised Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf for her recent moves to relax conditions for the release of data on foreign bank account holders. “The Swiss should not make a minor point of serious questions of…
This content was published on
The move affects Switzerland’s raft of Double Taxation Agreements (DTAs) – in various stages of implementation – and is motivated by fear of being put back on an OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) black or grey list. The European Commission, which welcomed the Swiss government’s announcement, is pushing for an automatic exchange of…
This content was published on
Over the past few years, UBS has garnered a lot of negative press. Extraordinary general assemblies and public protests have been occuring with increasing frequency.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.