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THIS IS AMERICA AND AMERICANS
A Swiss Bank Is Set to Open Its Secret Files
In the hush-hush world of Swiss banking, the unthinkable is happening: secrets
are spilling into the open.
UBS the largest bank in Switzerland, agreed on Wednesday to divulge the names
of well-heeled Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore
accounts at the bank to evade taxes. The bank admitted conspiring to defraud
the INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICES and agreed to pay $780 million to settle a
sweeping federal investigation into its activities.
It is unclear how many of its clients' names UBS will divulge. Federal
prosecutors have been examining about 19,000 accounts at the bank, but UBS
ultimately may disclose the identities of only a few hundred customers.
But to some, turning over any names at all heralds the end of the secret Swiss
bank account, whose traditions date to the Middle Ages.
"The Swiss are saying that this is the end of Swiss banking as they knew it,"
said Jack Blum, an offshore tax specialist. "Nobody will trust the security of
the Swiss bank account."
As part of the settlement, UBS agreed to cooperate with a broad summons issued
by the Justice Department to turn over the names. Under the terms of a
so-called deferred prosecution agreement, the bank and its executives could be
indicted if UBS didn't identify the customers.
UBS has said it is closing the offshore accounts of its American clients. But
under the deal with the United States authorities, the bank must provide
periodic written evidence of that to prosecutors. UBS earned $200 million
annually from the business.
Prosecutors suspect that from late 2002 to 2007, UBS helped American clients
illegally hide $20 billion, letting them evade $300 million a year in taxes.
In a striking admission, UBS said that from 2000 through 2007, some of its
private bankers and managers had "participated in a scheme to defraud the
United States" and the I.R.S. by helping American clients set up and conceal
offshore accounts. The scheme involved falsifying or not properly obtaining or
filing certain tax forms required of both the bank and its clients.
UBS's offshore private banking business once employed some 60 private bankers
in Lugano, Zurich and Geneva. Prosecutors claimed UBS referred clients to
lawyers and accountants who set up secret offshore entities to conceal assets
from the I.R.S.
UBS urged some American clients to destroy records and to stash watches,
jewelry and artwork that they had bought with money hidden offshore in safe
deposit boxes in Switzerland. The bank also encouraged them to use Swiss credit
cards so the I.R.S. could not track purchases. In a statement on Wednesday,
Peter Kurer, the chairman of UBS, said that "UBS sincerely regrets the
compliance failures in its U.S. cross-border business that have been identified
by the various government investigations in Switzerland and the U.S., as well
as our own internal review. We accept full responsibility for these improper
activities."
Marcel Rohner, the group chief executive of UBS, said in a statement that "it
is apparent that as an organization we made mistakes and that our control
systems were inadequate."
In January a senior UBS executive, Raoul Weil, was declared a fugitive, two
months after being indicted by a federal judge in connection with the
investigation of the bank. Mr. Weil, a Swiss citizen, oversaw the cross-border
private banking operations from 2002 to 2007.
UBS had fiercely resisted turning over the names, even after some executives
were indicted and implicated in the offshore private banking business. Swiss
law distinguishes broadly between tax avoidance, tax evasion and tax fraud.
Unlike in the United States, tax evasion is not a criminal offense under Swiss
law.
The move by UBS to settle the case, on the eve of a Senate subcommittee hearing
next Tuesday on the matter, signals how close the bank came to being indicted
for not cooperating with prosecutors. Indictment is a near-certain death knell
for corporations.
Of the $780 million that UBS will pay, $380 million represents disgorgement of
profits from its cross-border business. The remainder represents United States
taxes that UBS failed to withhold on the accounts. The figures include
interest, penalties and restitution for unpaid taxes
As part of the deal, UBS also entered into a consent order with the Securities
and Exchange Commission in which it agreed to charges of having acted as an
unregistered broker-dealer and investment adviser for Americans.
The settlement caps a painful run for UBS, which suffered more than $50 billion
in losses in the collapse of the American mortgage market and received a $60
billion bailout from the Swiss government last October.
The bank will not have to pay additional fines and penalties, which could have
brought the deal to more than $1 billion. People briefed on the issue said the
banking crisis and the recession were factors in this decision by prosecutors.
THIS IS INDIA AND INDIANS
LOOK WHERE OUR MONEY IS GOING????
Revelation on Swiss Bank Accounts "who can save india no one knows where tax
payer money is going " Revelation on Swiss Bank Accounts
This is so shocking . . . . . wish black money deposits was an Olympics event .
. . . . India would have won a gold medal hands down. The second best Russia
has 4 times lesser deposit. US is not even there in the counting in top five !!
India has more money in Swiss banks than all the other countries combined !!!!
Recently, due to international pressure, Swiss govt. agreed to disclose the
names of the account holders only if the respective govts formally asked for
it. Indian govt.. is not asking for the details . . . . no marks for guessing
why ????
We need to start a movement to pressurise the govt. to do so !! This is perhaps
the only way, and a golden opportunity, to expose the high and mighty and weed
out corruption !!
Please read on . . . . . and forward to all the honest Indians to . ... . like
somebody is forwarding to you . .. . . . and build a ground-swell of support
for action !!
Is India poor, who says? Ask Swiss banks With personal account deposit bank of
$1500 billion in foreign reserve which have been misappropriated, an amount 13
times larger than the country's foreign debt, one needs to rethink if India is
a poor country?.
DISHONEST INDUSTRIA LISTS, scandalous politicians and corrupt IAS, IRS, IPS
officers have deposited in foreign banks in their illegal personal accounts a
sum of about $ 1500 billion, which have been misappropriated by them. This
amount is about 13 times larger than the country's foreign debt. With this
amount 45 crore poor people can get Rs 1,00,000 each. This huge amount has been
appropriated from the people of India by exploiting and betraying them.
Once this huge amount of black money & property comes back to India , the
entire foreign debt can be repaid in 24 hours. After paying the entire foreign
debt, we will have surplus amount, almost 12 times larger than the foreign
debt. If this surplus amount is invested in earning interest, the amount of
interest will be more than the annual budget of the Central government. So even
if all the taxes are abolished, then also the Central government will be able
to maintain the country very comfortably. .
Some 80,000 people trave l to Switzerland every year, of whom 25,000 travel
very frequently. 'Obviously, these people won't be tourists. They must be
travelling there for some other reason,' believes an official involved in
tracking illegal money. And, clearly, he isn't referring to the commerce
ministry bureaucrats who've been flitting in and out of Geneva ever since the
World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations went into a tailspin!
Just read the following details and note how these dishonest industrialists,
scandalous politicians, corrupt officers, cricketers, film actors, illegal sex
trade and protected wildlife operators, to name just a few, sucked this
country's wealth and prosperity. This may be the picture of deposits in Swiss
banks only. What about other international banks?
Black money in Swiss banks -- Swiss Banking Association report, 2006 details
bank deposits in the territory of Switzerland by nationals of following
countries :
Top Five
1. India ---- $1,456 billion
2. Russia ---$ 470 billion
3. UK -------$390 billion
4. Ukraine - $100 billion
5. China -----$ 96 billion
Now do the maths - India with $1456 billion or $1.4 trillion has more money in
Swiss banks than rest of the world combined.
Public loot since 1947: Can we bring back our money? It is one of the biggest
loots witnessed by mankind -- the loot of the Aam Aadmi (common man) since
1947, by his
brethren occupying public office. It has been orchestrated by politicians,
bureaucrats and some businessmen. The list is almost all-encompassing. No
wonder, everyone in India loots with impunity and without any fear. What is
even more depressing in that this ill-gotten wealth of ours has been stashed
away abroad into secret bank accounts located in some of the world's best known
tax havens. And to that extent the Indian economy has been stripped of its
wealth.
Ordinary Indians may not be exactly aware of how such secret accounts operate
and what are the rules and regulations that go on to govern such tax havens.
However, one may well be aware of 'Swiss bank accounts,' the shorthand for
murky dealings, secrecy and of course pilferage from developing countries into
rich developed ones.
In fact, some finance experts and economists believe taxhavens to be a
conspiracy of the western world against the poor countries. By allowing the
proliferation of tax havens in the twentieth century, the western world
explicitly encourages the movement of scarce capital from the developing
countries to the rich.
In March 2005, the Tax Justice Network (TJN) published a research finding
demonstrating that $11.5 trillion of personal wealth was held offshore by rich
individuals across the globe. The findings estimated that a large proportion of
this wealth was managed from some 70 tax havens. Further,aug menting these
studies of TJN, Raymond Baker -- in his widely celebrated book titled
'Capitalism' s Achilles Heel : Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free Market
System' -- estimates that at least $5 trillion have been shifted out of poorer
countries to the West since the mid-1970.
It is further estimated by experts that 1 % of the world's population holds
more than 57 % of total global wealth, routing it invariably through these tax
havens. How much of this is from India is anybody's guess. What is to be noted
here is that most of the wealth of Indians parked in these tax havens is
illegitimate money acquired through corrupt means...
Naturally, the secrecy associated with the bank accounts in such places is
central to the issue, not their low tax rates as the term 'tax havens'
suggests. Remember Bofors and how India could not trace the ultimate
beneficiary of those transactions because of the secrecy associated with these
bank accounts?
IS THERE ANY ONE WHO CAN SAVE INDIA?
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