R i g h t a r d i a

This blog is dedicated to progressive and liberal thought. It also discusses new technology, how technology affects privacy and developments in Russia, China, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Rightardia fully supports the rights of workers to organize, the feminist movement, and all Americans regardless or ethnicity, sex or gender.It uses humor, satire and parody to expose conservative thought for what it truly is: BS! Rightardia contributes to the DNC, DCCC, DSCC and MoveOn.Org.

Showing posts with label Bradley Birkenfeld. Show all posts

Thursday, January 7, 2010

60 Minutes: The Corrupt Swiss Banking culture

Watch CBS News Videos Online The Swiss have the highest standard of living in the world. The banking system that started during the Nazi Era, has a lot to do with the economic success of the country. Undoubtedly the banking security breach will have an effect on the Swiss economy.

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60 Minutes: A Crack In The Swiss Vault

Watch CBS News Videos Online

January 3, 2010 5:30 PM

Switzerland's largest bank has given authorities formerly sacrosanct info on its U.S. customers because of tips provided by a whistleblower, who tells Steve Kroft the secrets Swiss bankers never tell.

Rightardia has been following the UBS tax evasion marketing scheme for several months. Bradley Birkenfeld is a central player on unmasking this scheme that has been going on for decades. The video is 13 minutes long but is worth watching.

Nearly 15,000 Americans are settling with the IRS because of the UBS tax evasion and similar schemes with other European banks.

You can be sure that the majority of the tax evaders were card carrying conservatives, the same people the GOP thinks needs big Income Tax breaks.

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Sunday, August 23, 2009

Former UBS Banker Sentenced to 40 Months for Aiding Billionaire American Evade Taxes

Friday, August 21, 2009

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Former UBS Banker Sentenced to 40 Months for Aiding Billionaire American Evade Taxes

MIAMI – Former UBS banker, Bradley Birkenfeld of Weymouth, Mass., has been sentenced to 40 months incarceration by Judge William J. Zloch in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. On June 19, 2008, Birkenfeld pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States, the Justice Department announced today.

Bradley Birkenfeld is in the foreground

According to court documents and statements made in court today, Birkenfeld worked as a private banker in Geneva, Switzerland, for UBS AG, one of the country’s largest banks.

While at UBS, Birkenfeld assisted an American billionaire real estate developer evade paying $7.2 million in taxes by assisting the developer conceal $200 million of assets hidden offshore in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

While at UBS, Birkenfeld routinely traveled to and had contacts within the United States in an effort to assist wealthy Americans conceal their ownership in assets held offshore and therefore evade the payment of taxes on the income generated on the money hidden offshore.

In order to assist wealthy Americans who concealed assets at UBS in Switzerland, Birkenfeld admitted that he and others advised

U.S. clients to place cash and valuables in Swiss safety deposit boxes
purchase jewels, artwork and luxury items using the funds in their Swiss bank account while overseas
misrepresent the receipt of funds from the Swiss bank account in the United States as loans from the Swiss bank
destroy all off-shore banking records existing in the United States
utilize Swiss bank credit cards that they claimed could not be discovered by United States authorities
file false U.S. individual income tax returns that omitted income earned by their clients and fraudulently misrepresented that their clients did not have an interest in and signature authority over accounts held offshore.

In February 2009, UBS entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and the bank admitted to helping U.S. taxpayers hide accounts from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

As part of their agreement, UBS provided the United States government with the identities of, and account information for, certain United States customers of UBS’s cross-border business. The deferred prosecution agreement paragraph 13 stated that the United States would be seeking enforcement of a civil "John Doe" summons seeking records for United States persons who maintained accounts with UBS in Switzerland.

On Aug. 19, 2009, the civil matter was resolved and UBS agreed to produce the identities and account information of 4,450 additional UBS customers who are believed to have violated United States law.

"To those taxpayers who have illegally hidden their income in foreign bank accounts and to those who have illegally helped clients hide income and assets, today's sentencing serves as notice: come in and completely come clean," said John A. DiCicco, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

"A failure or delay in doing so until after the Government has discovered the wrongdoing, even if there is then cooperation, has serious consequences."

"Those who have stashed money offshore should not take comfort in the fact that the UBS investigation seems to have reached criminal and civil resolutions," said Jeffrey H. Sloman, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

"New leads and additional evidence are being uncovered each day. We are committed to pursuing these new leads and to developing additional cases against those who assist Americans evade their income tax obligations."

Acting Assistant Attorney General John DiCicco and Acting U.S. Attorney Jeffrey H. Sloman commended the investigative efforts of the IRS agents involved in this case.

The prosecution is being handled by Senior Litigation Counsel Kevin M. Downing and Trial Attorney Michael P. Ben’Ary of the Tax Division, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Neiman.

"Mr. Birkenfeld admitted his role in advising wealthy U.S. clients to take various actions to conceal their assets at UBS in Switzerland from the US Government," said Eileen Mayer, Chief, IRS Criminal Investigation.

"Today, he is paying the price for that role. Clients as well as promoters of international tax fraud are under the watchful scrutiny of the IRS. For anyone with hidden offshore assets, the IRS wants to send a clear message. There is still time – although the clock is ticking - to come in and get right with the government."

United States citizens who have an interest in, or signature or other authority over, a financial account in a foreign country with assets in excess of $10,000 are required to disclose the existence of such account on Schedule B, Part III of their individual income tax return.

Additionally, American citizens must file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) with the U.S. Treasury, disclosing any financial account in a foreign country with assets in excess of $10,000 for which they have a financial interest in or signature authority, or other authority over.

More information about the Justice Department’s Tax Division and its enforcement efforts is available at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/.

A copy of this press release may be found on the Web site of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida at www.usdoj.gov/usao/fls.

Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov.

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Friday, August 21, 2009

Ex-UBS Banker Birkenfeld Gets 40 Months

Rightardia comment: You can bet that some high level politics were involved in this case. Only 10 per cent of the UBS tax evaders were identified and UBS can still operate in the US. Bradley Birkenfeld will probably spend 40 months in one of those boy scout camps for 'non violent offenders' even though he did a tremendous amount of damage to the US economy.

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Former UBS AG banker Bradley Birkenfeld was sentenced to 40 months in prison for helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. Birkenfeld, 44, played a key role in showing prosecutors and U.S. Senate investigators how Zurich-based UBS helped Americans hide as much as $20 billion in assets.

“I’d like to express my regret for my actions,” Birkenfeld, who pleaded guilty last year, told U.S. District Judge William Zloch today in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

The sentence was 10 months longer than prosecutors requested in court papers citing his “substantial assistance” in the investigation of UBS. Birkenfeld argued in a filing that he deserved probation, not prison. The judge didn’t explain his reasons for the sentence.

UBS agreed on Aug. 19 to hand over account information on 4,450 [of 52,000] accounts to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The bank on Feb. 18 said it would pay $780 million to avoid prosecution.

Birkenfeld and Liechtenstein investment adviser Mario Staggl were charged in April 2008 with helping California billionaire Igor Olenicoff and others evade taxes. Staggl is a fugitive.

February Settlement

UBS’s February settlement and prosecutors’ efforts to wrest the names of secret Swiss bank account holders from it wouldn’t have occurred without Birkenfeld’s cooperation, he said in an Aug. 18 request for leniency.

Since the bank’s settlement, four UBS clients have agreed to plead guilty to failing to report offshore accounts. Former UBS banker Raoul Weil is also a fugitive, and an ex-UBS manager and a Swiss lawyer were indicted in Fort Lauderdale yesterday on charges related to the investigation.

UBS bankers lured U.S. clients with sponsorships of art fairs and tennis tournaments, Birkenfeld said in court papers accompanying his plea. The bank trained employees to avoid detection in the U.S. when visiting clients, and Birkenfeld once smuggled diamonds for a client.

His leniency request included letters of support from U.S. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, representatives of the Securities and Exchange Commission and IRS, and Rosie Casals, a former professional tennis player.

The case is U.S. v. Birkenfeld, 08-cr-60099, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida (Fort Lauderdale).

Read the complete story at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aeO4povpQVP8

To contact the reporters on this story: Erik Larson in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at elarson4@bloomberg.net; Carlyn Kolker in New York at ckolker@bloomberg.net.

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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Shut Down the Swiss Bank UBS in the US

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said 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.

"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 to 52,000 US citizens was one focus of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The role of the LGT bank, owned by the royal family of Liechtenstein, was also investigated.

Levin said UBS practices resulted in its U.S. clients maintaining undeclared Swiss accounts that amounted to "$18 billion dollars in assets hidden from the IRS.

Levin revealed a list of "secrecy tricks" he said the UBS bankers used to carry out their tax haven schemes.

Levin said UBS hid behind Swiss bank secrecy laws to hide its misconduct, and offered unlicensed services in the US. UBS is the world's largest private bank.

One of its bankers, Bradley Birkenfeld, has already pleaded guilty in the US to tax evasion and fraud and is cooperating with federal prosecutors in Miami.

In a plea agreement, Birkenfeld detailed how he said he had been trained by UBS to help wealthy Americans evade taxes.

In one case, Birkenfeld told prosecutors he purchased diamonds using a US client's Swiss bank account and smuggled the diamonds into the United States in a toothpaste tube.

For years, another bank, LGT Bank, in the tiny European principality of Liechtenstein, tucked between Austria and Switzerland, has also been regarded as a safe haven for wealthy Americans trying to hide their money from the IRS.

Liechtenstein is considered one of the most secretive places in the world.

That all changed when a disgruntled super geek at LGT, Heinrich Kieber, downloaded all the names and secret accounts on to two CDs and turned them over to tax authorities in the US and Europe.

In court documents, federal prosecutors say UBS bankers helped set up many of the secret accounts in Liechtenstein.

Prosecutors say part of the Swiss bank scam was for the bank managers to have a third party set up sham entities for the US clients in tax havens, such as Panama or the British Virgin Islands, who would pose as the owners of the entities.

The American tax evaders were probably very shocked when their information wound up in the hands of the Internal Revenue Service.

In a statement, UBS said it "has been working diligently with US and Swiss authorities" to provide information to US investigators.

The statement noted that information about tax fraud "is not protected by Swiss bank client confidentiality," suggesting it may turn over the names and account details of US citizens who had once been promised secrecy. However, the Swiss government threatened to confiscate any UBS records before they could be tuned over to the US.

A UBS executive, Mark Branson, said the bank will no longer provide "undeclared" accounts to US citizens and is "winding down" its business involving already existing accounts.

"We now know that our program had failures and misconduct did occur," Branson said in describing what he said was a UBS internal review.

"We are committed to taking both corrective and disciplinary measures," the UBS executive said.

Levin said he was "skeptical' about claims from UBS and LGT that they are changing their practices.

A spokesperson for the Liechtenstein embassy in Washington, D.C. said because it was still investigating the allegations raised in the hearing, "the Principality of Liechtenstein is not in a position to confirm specific allegations." Liechtenstein recently worked out an agreement with the UK and will also close any illegal British accounts without revealing the names of the clients.

Levin called for passage of new laws to end tax haven abuses.

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