Friday, July 18, 2008

UBS Investigation Reveals Secrecy Tricks Allegedly Used by Swiss Bankers.


Wow, this is real bad...

ABC News:


Federal regulators should consider revoking the US banking license of the giant Swiss Bank UBS because of its role in helping wealthy Americans evade billions of dollars in taxes, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) told ABC News today.

"I don't think that any bank that goes to the extent that UBS has gone through to avoid doing what their agreements with the United States require them to do, should be allowed to continue to do business unless they clean up their act," Levin said.

UBS's role in arranging "undeclared" accounts for an estimated 19,000 US citizens was one focus of a hearing by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Levin today. The role of the LGT bank, owned by the royal family of Liechtenstein, was also investigated.
(click here to read the full Senate investigative report)

Levin said UBS practices resulted in its U.S. clients maintaining undeclared Swiss accounts that collectively held "$18 billion dollars in assets that have been kept secret from the the IRS."


Also, this from yesterday's hearing:




Testifying on video at hearing, and in silhouette, was Heinrich Kieber, a former employee of the LGT Bank of Liechtenstein, the source of 12,000 pages of bank documents detailing secret, multi-million-dollar accounts held by "many, many, many" U.S. citizens for the alleged purpose of dodging taxes.

2 comments:

airJackie said...

This is really old news as history has shown even people like Howard Hughes used foreign/off shore banks to hide money. Now don't be surprised if Ken Lay had to have his wife move his money around. Cheney most likely put him stolen money in the Middle East Accounts as Americans believed the lie about them being our enemy. Let's see Dubai, Abudia, Jordan, Qatar even Turkey are now safe places to hide money.

KittyBowTie1 said...

Well, I don't think Howard Hughes had some pissed off computer guy in Liechtenstein naming names.