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Israeli Bank’s Swiss Branch Handled Soccer Bribes, Helped Thousands Evade US Taxes

By Daniel Bethencourt

U.S. prosecutors and state regulators fined Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest lender by assets, $874 million Thursday after accusing its Swiss private banking subsidiary of helping hundreds of clients evade billions of dollars in U.S. taxes for more than a decade. In a parallel action also announced Thursday, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn separately fined Hapoalim's Swiss subsidiary, BHS, $30 million after finding that several of the bank's employees knowingly circumvented compliance controls in facilitating dozens of bribe payments to senior officials at world soccer governing body FIFA as recently as 2015. Prosecutors said that from 2002 to 2014, BHS raked in...

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