Eight offshore banks are under federal grand jury investigation for facilitating tax evasion by U.S. citizens as part of a probe the Justice Department said has dealt “fabled Swiss bank secrecy a devastating blow.”
The department disclosed the probes on a section of its website detailing the Tax Division’s Offshore Compliance Initiative. In 2009, prosecutors charged UBS AG (UBSN), the largest Swiss bank, with aiding tax evasion by U.S. clients. UBS avoided prosecution by paying $780 million, admitting it fostered tax evasion, and giving the U.S. Internal Revenue Service data on more than 250 accounts. It later turned over data on another 4,450 accounts.
Prosecutors opened 150 grand jury investigations of offshore-banking clients, charging 30 people, and indicting 13 other people who facilitated the hiding of assets offshore, according to the website.
“In addition, grand jury investigations have been opened into eight additional offshore banks across the world,” according to the website. “The outcome cannot be measured in litigation results alone. This enforcement effort has dealt fabled Swiss bank secrecy a devastating blow.”
The Justice Department, which didn’t identify the eight banks, hadn’t previously said how many were under investigation. Charles Miller, a spokesman for the department, declined to comment yesterday.
‘Highly Unusual’
“The fact that the department has confirmed that there are eight grand jury investigations into offshore banks shows that the government’s enforcement efforts are a lot further along than had previously been disclosed,” Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the UBS case, said in a phone interview.
Neiman, who is now in private practice in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said it’s highly unusual for the government to “trumpet” the opening of a grand jury investigation.
“What makes this public acknowledgement so peculiar is the secrecy that usually surrounds grand jury investigations,” he said. “In fact, the department is prohibited by law from speaking about matters occurring before the grand jury.”
Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN), the second-largest Swiss bank, has said that U.S. prosecutors said it is a target of a criminal investigation. Victoria Harmon, a spokeswoman for Zurich-based Credit Suisse, declined to comment and referred to a July 21 bank statement.
July Indictments
Seven Credit Suisse bankers, including the former head of North American offshore banking, Markus Walder, were indicted that day in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on a charge of helping U.S. clients evade taxes through secret accounts.
“Credit Suisse is committed to a fully compliant cross- border business,” the bank said in that statement. “Subject to our Swiss legal obligations and throughout this process we will continue to cooperate with the U.S. authorities in an effort to resolve these matters.”
Since 2008, the U.S. has filed criminal tax charges against more than three dozen former U.S. clients of Zurich-based UBS, Credit Suisse, and London-based HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Europe’s biggest bank. Most of those clients have pleaded guilty.
On Sept. 4, SonntagsZeitung reported that Switzerland had until Sept. 6 to provide the U.S. with data as part of the Justice Department’s criminal probe into Credit Suisse.
The U.S. was requesting information about accounts held by thousands of Americans in 10 banks including Credit Suisse, the Zurich-based newspaper reported, citing correspondence between Michael Ambuehl, the state secretary to the Swiss finance ministry, and James Cole, the U.S. deputy attorney general.
Since 2009, about 30,000 U.S. taxpayers have avoided prosecution by disclosing their undeclared accounts to the IRS through a limited amnesty program, Douglas Shulman, the commissioner for the agency, said Sept. 15. Shulman said that 12,000 taxpayers had voluntarily disclosed their accounts in a second round of the program offered this year. He said the IRS had taken in $2.7 billion from holders of offshore bank accounts.
“You’d have to be living in a hole not to know that the U.S. government is really focused on offshore tax evasion,” Shulman said in a conference call.
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