U.S. Sues UBS Seeking Swiss Account Customer Names
Filed under: IRS, UBS, tax evasion, tax haven, unreported income
By David Voreacos and Carlyn Kolker, Bloomberg.com
The U.S. government sued UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, to try to force disclosure of the identities of as many as 52,000 U.S. customers with secret Swiss accounts.
The lawsuit, filed today in federal court in Miami, alleges that 32,000 secret accounts contained cash and 20,000 held securities, according to the statement. U.S. customers failed to report and pay U.S. income taxes on income earned in those accounts, which held about $14.8 billion in assets in the mid- 2000s, according to a statement from the Justice Department.
The case is U.S. v. UBS AG, 09-20423, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida (Miami).
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U.S. panel ups pressure on UBS, Swiss tax havens
By Kevin Drawbaugh, Reuters.com
Congressional investigators ratcheted up the pressure on UBS AG Thursday in a probe of its links to Americans who use Swiss bank accounts to avoid paying federal taxes.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said it would hold a hearing Feb. 24 on government efforts to get the names of thousands of UBS’ American clients.
The hearing — the latest step in a long-running probe — will focus on the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service’s request to UBS for more information about Americans’ accounts.
UBS pledged in July, at an earlier hearing, to cooperate with investigators in the matter, the committee said in a statement obtained by Reuters.
“But to date, virtually none of the requested information has been provided to either the IRS or the U.S. Department of Justice, which is also examining the matter,” it said.
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I.R.S. Is Said to Broaden UBS Inquiry
By LYNNLEY BROWNING, The New York Times
The Internal Revenue Service, which is participating in a broad federal investigation into UBS and its offshore private banking services, is widening its scrutiny to include ordinary accounts owned by Americans who work overseas, according to a person briefed on the issue.
The expanded scrutiny, which is being conducted by the agency’s civil division, parallels a narrower investigation by the Justice Department’s criminal division into scores of wealthy American clients with hidden offshore accounts run by UBS.
The so-called expatriate accounts are maintained in the same division, global wealth management and business banking, that oversaw the offshore accounts business now under criminal investigation. Prosecutors are investigating whether UBS, the world’s largest private bank, helped up to 19,000 wealthy American clients improperly deposit $20 billion overseas, evading an estimated $300 million a year in taxes.
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