US may target 10,000 client visits by UBS bank advisors
From Genevalunch.com
US authorities may be taking a new approach to going after the names of US-based clients of Swiss bank UBS. They are reportedly asking for the names of clients its advisors saw in the US. Reuters carries a lengthy article that states this, citing Swiss newsweekly Sonntagszeitung.
The move, if confirmed, may be a compromise in the legal dispute involving UBS and the US tax authority IRS, which wants the bank to divulge details on 52,000 of its US clients. Reuters reports that 60 UBS client advisors visited the US on average three times a year, for three weeks each visit, and saw four clients a day. John DiCicco, acting assistant attorney general in the tax division of the US Justice department, in March 2008 testified to a senate subcommittee investigating the case that “An internal UBS memorandum filed with the court demonstrates that, in 2004 alone, UBS bankers traveled to the United States where they held approximately 3,800 separate meetings with US clients to discuss their clients’ Swiss accounts. (Ed. note: the Sonntagszeitung article speculates that UBS hopes that the US Dept. of Justice may acccept the names of clients visited by UBS client officials as a way to avoid violating Swiss law by having to hand over all client data demanded by the IRS).
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