Under US pressure, Swiss bank bares secrets
LYNNLEY BROWNING
New York, Feb. 19: In the hush-hush world of Swiss banking, the unthinkable is happening: secrets are spilling into the open.
UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, agreed yesterday to divulge the names of well-heeled Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore accounts at the bank to evade taxes. The bank admitted conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and agreed to pay $780 million to settle a sweeping federal investigation into its activities.
It is unclear how many of its clients’ names UBS will divulge. Federal prosecutors have been examining about 19,000 accounts at the bank, but UBS ultimately may disclose the identities of only a few hundred customers. But to some, turning over any names at all heralds the end of the secret Swiss bank account. “The Swiss are saying that this is the end of Swiss banking as they knew it,” said Jack Blum, an offshore tax specialist. “Nobody will trust the security of the Swiss bank account.”
As part of the settlement, UBS agreed to cooperate with a broad summons issued by the justice department to turn over the names. Under the terms of a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, the bank and its executives could be indicted if UBS didn’t identify the customers.
UBS has said it is closing the offshore accounts of its American clients. But under the deal with the US authorities, the bank must provide periodic written evidence of that to prosecutors. UBS earned $200 million annually from the business. Prosecutors suspect that from late 2002 to 2007, UBS helped American clients illegally hide $20 billion, letting them evade $300 million a year in taxes.
In a striking admission, UBS said that from 2000 through 2007, some of its private bankers and managers had “participated in a scheme to defraud the United States” and the IRS by helping American clients set up and conceal offshore accounts.
The scheme involved falsifying or not properly obtaining or filing certain tax forms required of both the bank and its clients.
UBS’s offshore private banking business once employed some 60 private bankers in Lugano, Zurich and Geneva. Prosecutors claimed UBS referred clients to lawyers and accountants who set up secret offshore entities to conceal assets from the IRS. UBS urged some American clients to destroy records and to stash watches, jewellery and artwork that they had bought with money hidden offshore in safe deposit boxes in Switzerland.
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
If the US government can pressurise the Swiss banks to divulge the names of secret US account holders, why can't our own Indian government do the same.
The amount lying in Swiss banks from corrupt Indians is 1500 billion USD.
I think we should all build up public opinion so that these corrupt politicians are forced to bring back the money which rightly belongs to all Indians.
Radheshyam
