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‘Nothing But Good’ to Come From Access to UBS Accounts, Says Former IRS Agent
printIt is an exciting time to be an IRS investigator now that the agency is looking into the UBS AG accounts of over 4,500 U.S. citizens suspected of hiding assets offshore, according to John Everett, a licensed criminal investigator and certified fraud examiner based in Agoura Hills, California. The United States' deal with the Swiss bank, announced August 19, is likely just a stepping stone to similar agreements with other foreign banks and other tax haven jurisdictions, said Everett, a former special agent at the Internal Revenue Service. "Nothing but good can come of it," he said. What's more, the...
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Former UBS AG employee Stephanie Gibaud in 2008 was faced with the choice of whether to comply with her employer's request that she destroy records potentially indicating that the bank had courted tax-evading clients. When she refused, the bank psychologically bullied her until she departed in 2012.
Not long ago, U.S. settlements in the hundreds of millions of dollars for violations of American law by a foreign bank seemed unlikely, if not out of the realm of possibility altogether. Then came the $780 million deferred prosecution agreement with UBS AG in 2009.
If the acquittal of Raoul Weil earlier this week was for Swiss bankers a sign of hope and for American prosecutors a signal disappointment, it was both for a single reason. The verdict reflected the limits to U.S. ambitions to punish foreign bankers.
Thirty-four nations disclosed a finalized model plan Monday to regularly share financial data for tax enforcement purposes as part of a broader crackdown on tax dodgers and offshore jurisdictions.
A U.S.-Swiss plan to resolve a tax evasion dispute may absolve Switzerland's government from further action but will prove costly and time-consuming for participating banks, say attorneys.
In his 12-year career as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, Daniel W. Levy has investigated and prosecuted several banks, bankers, and financial services advisors that facilitated the evasion of U.S. taxes through the use of complicit offshore financial institutions.
An expected plan to resolve a U.S.-Swiss tax dispute will likely prompt a wave of disclosures by American taxpayers and clear the way for banks to turn over data on their employees.
Liechtenstein's oldest bank will pay nearly $24 million to the United States for aiding American tax evaders for at least a decade, the Southern District of New York disclosed Tuesday.
An expected agreement between the United Kingdom and Switzerland to tax half of the income of Britons keeping undeclared assets in Swiss bank accounts is a significant step backward in the fight against bank secrecy, say tax reform advocates.
A federal court Monday dismissed criminal charges against UBS AG after determining that the Swiss banking giant fulfilled its obligations under a high-profile deal made with U.S. authorities in August 2009.
Switzerland will begin disclosing account data on nearly 4,000 UBS AG clients within a week after Swiss lawmakers Thursday approved the handover, marking an unprecedented exception to the country's bank secrecy laws.
A decision by Swiss lawmakers to block a deal allowing UBS AG to turn over client data to the United States has left supporters of the agreement scrambling to find an alternative.
Lawmakers proposed a measure Wednesday that would potentially prohibit banks from processing credit card transactions for merchants and maintaining correspondent accounts for financial institutions deemed vulnerable to money laundering and tax evasion.
A Swiss proposal of how to circumvent a court ruling that blocked an August data exchange agreement may leave U.S. investigators with fewer names of suspected tax cheats than expected.
A new IRS division focusing on recovering lost tax revenue from the ultra-wealthy has begun auditing individuals, according to a corporate tax attorney at a Washington, D.C. law firm.
Many tax havens have done the bare minimum to remove themselves from an intergovernmental group's list of regulatory-lax jurisdictions, at times only signing tax treaties with other bank secrecy countries.
As many as a dozen countries are expected to press UBS AG for information on tax evaders following the bank's settlement last week with the United States, say tax analysts.
Mike Flowers, a former counsel to the Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence, discusses the committee's hearing on tax evasion by UBS AG and LGT Bank, in the second half of a two-part interview.
Switzerland's largest bank will pay $780 million to the United States for helping 17,000 U.S. citizens evade paying taxes on offshore revenue, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday.
A federal judge in Miami has granted a U.S. Justice Department request to obtain the bank account information of wealthy investors who may be hiding as much as $20 billion in undeclared assets through Swiss bank giant UBS AG.