WASHINGTON: The United States wants UBS to stop hiding tax cheats.
U.S. tax collectors slapped the Swiss-based banking giant with a lawsuit Thursday seeking the identities of tens of thousands of clients, who kept billions of dollars in assets at the bank to dodge the IRS.
A defiant Swiss president pledged to maintain his country’s bank secrecy laws. In the suit filed in Miami, the Obama administration wants UBS to turn over information on as many as 52,000 U.S. customers, who concealed their accounts from the U.S. government in violation of tax laws. “At a time when millions of Americans are losing their jobs, their homes and their health care, it is appalling that more than 50,000 of the wealthiest among us have actively sought to evade their civil and legal duty to pay taxes,” the acting assistant attorney general, John DiCicco, said in a statement.
A deal announced Wednesday provides access to about 250 to 300UBS customers, who used Swiss bank secrecy laws to hide assets. To avoid prosecution, UBS agreed to pay $780 million, which Justice Department officials said was the largest ever in a criminal tax case. The bank’s chairman, Peter Kurer, said UBS accepted “full responsibility” for helping its U.S. clients conceal assets from the Internal Revenue Service.
source : jang.com.pk
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