Subscribe to the Finance Headline RSS feed | Subscribe to the Finance Headline feed via EmailGrand Jury Charges Three Swiss Bankers with Concealing Assets for U.S. Taxpayers
January 26, 2012 in Banking Report · Leave a Comment
By Nancy J. Moore
A federal grand jury in New York Jan. 3 indicted three Swiss men working as client advisers to a Swiss bank for helping U.S. taxpayers hide more than $1.2 billion in assets (United States v. Berlinka, S.D.N.Y., No. 12-CR-002,indictment 1/3/12).
Michael Berlinka, Urs Frei, and Roger Keller, along with others not named in the indictment, were charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, impede the Internal Revenue Service, and evade income taxes.
The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and assigned to Judge Jed Rakoff.
According to the pleadings, the three advisers worked for the Zurich branch of “Swiss Bank A,” which began actively recruiting U.S. customers in 2008 after another bank, UBS AG, lost U.S. accounts due to an IRS investigation and eventual litigation.
Swiss Bank A does not have an office in the United States, and the advisers represented that it would be able to keep account information private under Swiss banking law and would not be subject to the same actions as were taken against UBS, which has U.S. offices.
U.S. taxpayers are required to provide information on any foreign bank account with a value of more than $10,000. They are also required to report all income earned worldwide…
