« Fortis Luxembourg and Bradford and Bingley IOM are the first offshore bank bailouts | Home | IRS unexpected new FBAR form for reporting foreign accounts »
UBS Sharing Client Data in Tax Case
By admin | October 4, 2008
For about as long as I remember, I’ve been bucking trends by advising offshore clients against Swiss banks in general and UBS in particular because they are not safe from a privacy point of view.
According to the NY times:Switzerland’s tax authorities, under pressure from a growing United States investigation into the Swiss bank giant UBS, are expected to hand over confidential data on wealthy American clients of UBS to the Justice Department, two people briefed on the matter said Tuesday.
The move would represent a significant shift in Switzerland’s banking secrecy laws, whose tradition dates to the Middle Ages.
UBS began handing over data on hundreds of American clients with offshore private banking accounts to the Swiss taxing authority starting in August, these people said.
The delivery to the Justice Department, expected to take place within several months, would place American client names in the hands of federal prosecutors seeking to build criminal cases against wealthy Americans they suspect of tax evasion.
The full story is available here. Of course, nothing surprising new here as I already wrote about this here.
Sphere: Related ContentNo related posts.
Topics: Cautionary tales and real cases | 1 Comment »
One Response to “UBS Sharing Client Data in Tax Case”
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
October 4th, 2008 at 5:05 am
[...] Peter Macfarlane & Associates The Q Wealth Report’s offshore banking guru Peter Macfarlane blogs on private banking, IBCs, brokerage accounts and precious metals « UBS Sharing Client Data in Tax Case [...]