After hearing this news, there have got to be a lot of nervous millionaires out there:
The UBS memo was blunt: the “Swiss solution” could help affluent Americans. That message, sent to the bank’s executives in July 2004, referred to a UBS plan to help rich customers evade taxes by hiding money in offshore havens like the Bahamas.
The memo, along with dozens of e-mail messages like it, were disclosed on Thursday in a blistering court document filed by the Justice Department, which sought to compel UBS, based in Switzerland, to divulge the identities of 52,000 Americans whom the authorities suspect of using secret offshore accounts at the bank to dodge taxes.
In the criminal investigation that led to this week’s settlement, the Justice Department had zeroed in on about 19,000 wealthy Americans. Those UBS customers had a combined $20 billion in assets at the bank, and may have evaded $300 million a year in federal taxes through UBS’s undeclared offshore private banking services.
Posts
