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From the Opalesque Team: According to Swiss daily Le Temps, a few months ago, the U.S. tax administration (IRS) set up an office for informants, which seeks to obtain information on lawbreakers of all sorts against a recompense (which can be around 15% of what the IRS eventually collects, more in some cases).
The U.S. takes the issue of fiscal fraud very seriously, and associates it closely to tax evasion. Subsequent to the conflict with UBS, dozens of Americans who hold accounts in the Swiss bank have already ‘confessed’ and are trying to find a compromise with the IRS to reduce fines which could cost them extraordinary amounts.
With this ‘mole’ system, the IRS managed to obtain most of the information on Liechtenstein’s LGT Bank, which has similar problems to UBS’s (LGT Bank also ran into trouble when informants gave away names of German investors). The Netherlands’ RaboBank Group was also caught that way.
There is nothing to stop the IRS, concludes Le Temps, to probe the informer himself if he was part of a conspiracy.
In a separate article, Le Temps reported that the Swiss ambassador in Washington, Urs Ziswiler, declined an invitation from the U.S. Senate to discus the UBS conflict. “The American authorities continue to threaten the bank with unilateral measures,” he said. “These measures are not in the mutual interest of our countries.” U.S. senator Carl Levin, who was supposed to conduct the meeting, expressed regrets publicly that Ziswil...................... To view our full article Click here
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