Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Issues Report On Tax Haven Banks Hiding Billions from the IRS
Filed under: IRS, tax evasion, tax haven, UBS, unreported income
7/17/08 Press Release from Michigan Senator Carl Levin’s office-
WASHINGTON – At a Thursday hearing entitled, Tax Haven Banks and U.S. Tax Compliance, the latest in a series of hearings with insider information about the workings of the offshore industry, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will examine how tax haven banks facilitate tax evasion by U.S. clients, hide client and bank misconduct behind the cloak of bank secrecy laws, and add to the offshore abuses that cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $100 billion dollars each year.
- Marsh. The Marshes of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, hid $49 million in four
- Wu. LGT helped William Wu hide ownership of assets, including his house in
- Lowy. LGT used transfer companies and a foundation with a
- Gonzalez. LGT helped a Gonzalez car dealership inflate invoices, move funds offshore and, after getting sued for their pricing practices, hide assets in case of a court judgment.
- Chong. LGT helped Richard Chong use hidden accounts to move millions of dollars related to his business ventures, routing them through an offshore corporation to avoid scrutiny.
- Miskin. LGT helped Michael Miskin hide assets from courts, tax authorities, and his wife.
- Olenicoff. Bradley Birkenfeld, a private banker employed by UBS AG, pleaded guilty last month to conspiring with a
In reviewing these case histories, the investigation found: (1) bank secrecy laws and practices are serving as a cloak, not only for client misconduct, but also for misconduct by banks colluding with clients to evade taxes, dodge creditors, and defy court orders; (2) from at least 2000 to 2007, LGT and UBS employed banking practices that could facilitate, and have resulted in, tax evasion by their U.S. clients, including assisting clients to open accounts in the names of offshore entities; advising clients on complex offshore structures to hide ownership of assets; using client code names; and disguising asset transfers into and from accounts; (3) since 2001, LGT and UBS have collectively maintained thousands of U.S. client accounts with billions of dollars in assets that have not been disclosed to the IRS; UBS alone has an estimated 19,000 accounts in Switzerland for U.S. clients with assets valued at $18 billion, and the IRS has identified at least 100 U.S. taxpayers with accounts at LGT; and (4) LGT and UBS have assisted their U.S. clients in structuring their foreign accounts to avoid QI reporting to the IRS, including by allowing U.S. clients who sold their U.S. securities to continue to hold undisclosed accounts, and by opening accounts in the name of non-U.S. entities beneficially owned by U.S. clients; while these banking practices did not technically violate the banks’ Qualified Intermediaryagreements with the IRS, the result is that the banks helped keep accounts secret from the IRS and thereby facilitated tax evasion by their U.S. clients.
- Strengthen QI Reporting of Foreign Accounts Held by
- Strengthen 1099 Reporting. Congress should strengthen the statutory 1099 reporting requirements by requiring any domestic or foreign financial institution that obtains information that the beneficial owner of a foreign-owned financial account is a
- Strengthen QI Audits. The IRS should broaden QI audits to require bank auditors to report evidence of fraudulent or illegal activity.
- Penalize Tax Haven Banks that Impede
This hearing and report follow other investigations into offshore abuses by the Subcommittee. Hearings held by the Subcommittee in 2001 examined the historic and ongoing lack of cooperation by some offshore tax havens with international tax enforcement efforts and their resistance to divulging information needed to detect, stop and prosecute
UBS, LGT Helped Hide Assets, Evade Taxes, Senate Says
UBS, LGT Helped Hide Assets, Evade Taxes, Senate Says (Update2)
By David Voreacos and Carlyn Kolker, Bloomberg.com
UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager, hid as much as $17.9 billion for 19,000 Americans who didn’t declare assets to the Internal Revenue Service, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a report released in
“UBS has opened thousands of accounts in Switzerland that are beneficially owned by U.S. clients, hold billions of dollars in assets, and have not been reported to U.S. tax authorities,” according to the 114-page report by the subcommittee, which is scheduled to begin hearings today on tax-haven banks.
UBS shares rose 7 percent to 20.16 Swiss francs at 12:20 p.m. in
Cover Up the Tracks
Both banks flouted agreements to help the IRS track foreign assets of
Lowy, 77, issued a statement saying he “totally rejects” the committee’s assertion that he tried to evade taxes.
Click here for complete article.
Day of Reckoning? Super Rich Tax Cheats Outed by Bank Clerk
Technician in Liechtenstein Turns Over Names of Americans With Secret Bank Accounts
By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ, ABCNEWS.GO.COM
July 15, 2008—
Hundreds of super-rich American tax cheats have, in effect, turned themselves in to the IRS after a bank computer technician in the tiny European country of Liechtenstein came forward with the names of US citizens who had set up secret accounts there, according to Washington lawyers investigating the scheme.
The bank clerk, Heinrich Kieber, has been branded a thief by the government of Liechtenstein for violating the country’s bank secrecy laws.
He is now in hiding but scheduled to testify to the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Thursday via a video statement from a secret location, according to Congressional investigators.
Aides for committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) are scheduled to provide reporters with a background briefing later this morning in Washington on the committee’s investigation of tax haven banks in Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
Aides say the hearing will also focus on the role of the giant Swiss bank UBS and its alleged efforts to help wealthy Americans hide their money from the IRS through shell companies in Liechtenstein…
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In Europe, widening probe targets tax haven
Nearly two decades after taking the helm of Deutsche Post, Klaus Zumwinkel had transformed Germany’s national postal service into a global mail and logistics giant with annual revenues of €66 billion ($102 billion) – more than double those of FedEx. A director on the boards of Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Telekom, and Lufthansa, he was one of Germany’s most prominent executives.
Then, on Feb. 14, he surrendered to police amid suspicion that he evaded €1 million in taxes. The next day, he resigned, becoming the first to fall in a massive probe that has broadened to nine other countries.
But even as Germany conducts its biggest tax-evasion probe ever, experts warn that technological advances and opaque banking practices are making it easier for individuals to stash trillions of dollars a year in havens such as Liechtenstein, Monaco, and Luxembourg.
“In this new, more globalized, integrated world, where you can go on to the Internet and open a secret offshore bank account in eight minutes, it’s getting easier for a wider spectrum of the population to hide assets offshore and more difficult for tax authorities to follow the financial trail,” says Grace Perez-Navarro, deputy director at the tax unit of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.
The OECD and the European Union (EU) have led the way in tackling tax evasion, and countries such as Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands have all reported minor successes or launched new initiatives in recent months. The German probe, based on a list of 1,400 alleged tax cheats provided on CD by a paid informant, has yielded more than 300 suspects and $47 million in recovered taxes.
German tax inspectors are expected to launch a new round of raids shortly, and Spain, Britain, Australia, and the US are conducting their own investigations – some based on the same informant.
Liechtenstein, which has identified the informant as Heinrich Kieber, a former employee for a subsidiary of the royal family’s bank, LGT, has contested the legality of the information. Germany’s domestic intelligence services paid a reported $7.5 million to obtain and verify the lists, $6.2 million of which was pocketed by the informant.
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Italians gripped by leaks naming Liechtenstein account holders
Italians are calling it the “trickle-down effect” as names of holders of Liechtenstein bank accounts are leaked to the press, including politicians, entertainers, industrialists and even a dog called Gunther.
Denials and clarifications are hitting the headlines as the leaks keep pouring out, with the Italian media not in the least shy about releasing names before checking with the alleged holders at Liechtenstein’s Bank LGT.
Tax investigators note that holding an account itself is not illegal, but are still poring over some 400 Italian names obtained from the UK government to see if they were tax compliant.
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European tax scandal is widening
The list of countries involved in the European tax scandal is growing.
Austria is being asked by the EU commissioner to end banking secrecy (read article here) and ATO (the Australia Taxation Office) is investigating tax evasion and avoidance by Australian residents via legal structures in Liechtenstein (read article here).
Secrets Out
The tax haven scandal currently involving more than 1,000 Europeans, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, and billions of dollars in foregone tax revenue should be of more than passing interest to the governments of Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore.
Just last week, Germany’s finance minister, invariably described as the no- nonsense Peer Steinbrueck, stated at a EU finance ministers meeting that once the EU had dealt with the non- cooperative tax havens in Europe, it would invariably need to turn its attention to tax havens further afield including Macau, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Apart from disagreeing strongly with being designated as tax havens as opposed to low tax jurisdictions with strong banking secrecy laws, these Asian banking centers need to be concerned with the techniques the BND recently used to address German government concerns regarding what it considers Liechtenstein’s tax haven status and the impact it was having on Germany’s treasury.
Click here for complete article by Sam Porteous, TheStandard.com.hk
Tax Haven Crackdown
Last week, European finance ministers rallied behind Peer Steinbrück, their German colleague, and backed a crackdown on tax havens, claiming that some £77 billion in revenues was being lost by national governments each year.
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