This report is typical of many tonight:
UBS admitted it broke U.S. law in setting up sham offshore tax shelters for wealthy Americans and agreed to work with U.S. authorities in reviewing 19,000 accounts to identify clients who may have committed tax fraud.“Our compliance system had failures, and misconduct appears to have occurred,” Mark Branson, chief […]
The FT has noted that:
It promises to be a long hot summer for UBS and Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s two world-scale banks.
That is not because of continuing struggles with their troubled US credits, or from new threats to bank secrecy - one of assorted legal challenges from the US.
Instead, the concerns are homegrown, involving Switzerland’s regulators, […]
UBS is fighting for its survival, not just in the US, but quite possibly around the world following the exposure of the corporate corruption at the heart of its tax practise in the USA. But in the Observer today a senior UBS official is quoted as saying:
It does look bad. Everyone is pretty upset.
The Swiss […]
More stories coming out of the guilty plea by former UBS American banker Bradley Birknefeld:
UBS earned about $US200 million a year in revenue by helping high-income clients through such practices as setting up sham entities in tax havens including Switzerland, Panama, British Virgin Islands, Hong Kong and Liechtenstein, Birkenfeld said.In one case, Birkenfeld even agreed […]
The FT has reported that:
A former UBS private banker has pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to help a US billionaire evade income taxes after agreeing to co-operate with prosecutors in the case.
They added:
“He’s going to tell the government everything he knows about what was going on at UBS,” said Danny Onorato, attorney for […]
I am almost amused by a comment made this morning concerning my analysis of Tesco’s financing operation in Zug in Switzerland by Tim Worstall who had this to say:
Richard Murphy of course doesn’t agree but then so what? He’s in fact completely missed which Treasury is losing from the arrangement, and it ain’t the UK […]
Tesco’s claim that it doesn’t avoid tax has been blown clean out of the water by Private Eye. In this week’s edition the Eye notes that, as it puts it, Tesco has been avoiding corporation tax through a complex web of offshore operations. That is, of course, exactly the allegation the Guardian also made a […]
I’m still struggling to believe that anyone could as blatantly promote tax evasion Konrad Hummler, a partner in Wegelin & Co., did when saying this to Der Spiegel:
German tax evasion is a legitimate defense by citizens attempting to “partially escape the current grasp of the administrators of a disastrous social welfare state and its fiscal […]
The Swiss Private Banker’s Association has looked at the consequences of making tax evasion a criminal offence in Switzerland (where it does not have that status at present) and has found that after asking someone they call a highly regarded expert on the subject - Professor Xavier Oberson, of Geneva University that the change:
would lead […]
I hear rumours from Switzerland.
Apparently the indictment of a UBS banker in the USA on charges relating to tax evasion through Liechtenstein has made the banking communtiy somewhat bervous. Some Swiss banks have apparently ordered travel restrictions for the USA. No more Florida sunbathing and New York Christmas shopping for Swiss bankers, I suspect.
Now why […]
