PERHAPS for the first time in US, a Federal Court has
prosecuted a banker for helping Americans evade taxes, which may well set a new
trend.
A
former UBS banker, Renzo Gadola, pleaded guilty in a Miami federal court, of
encouraging American clients to evade taxes by opening undeclared accounts in
lesser known small cantonal banks in Switzerland. Gadola, who worked with UBS
for 13 years, admitted that together with another Swiss banker, they dissuaded
American clients from joining the IRS amnesty program for disclosure of offshore
accounts and instead helped those, who hadn’t told IRS about their UBS accounts,
to open undeclared accounts in Basel-based Basler Kantonalbank, that had signed
an agreement requiring it to withhold taxes for the IRS on accounts beneficially
owned by U.S. taxpayers.
Last
year, UBS, the largest Swiss Bank that admitted to helping American clients
evade taxes, avoided prosecution by making a huge payment of US $ 780 million in
addition to giving out the secret account data of thousands of Americans to the
IRS, which led to several prosecutions by the tax authorities.
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