| inbluevt | Date: Friday, 2013/07/05, 7:19 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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BROOKLYN, New York — On a cold winter’s day in the storied borough of Brooklyn, a car
rolled to a stop at an appointed time on an appointed street. An attentive adult sent out a scurrying 5-year-old child to hand over a brown paper bag. Inside that bag was about $150,000 in cash. The person receiving the cash was known only as Client 2, who got a transfer from Client 1. Both were apparently unknown to each other. Their clandestine transaction was arranged by Josef Beck, according to a federal indictment. The U.S. accused the Swiss adviser of working closely with
Swiss banks to help Americans access their undeclared money.
It sounds like the stuff of a Hollywood movie, but it’s just one of many eye-popping tales buried in thousands of pages of court documents reviewed by McClatchy and used in the prosecution of Wegelin & Co.,Switzerland’s oldest bank, whose origins date to 1741.
Wegelin officials pleaded guilty in January to helping Americans shelter taxable income in Switzerland, and sentencing was March 4. It marked a major victory for Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the
Southern District of New York. Wegelin was ordered to pay about $58 million on top of $16.3 million in forfeitures already obtained by U.S. authorities.
From clandestine meetings to phony foundations described in federal indictments, the secret world of offshore banking and the lengths to which Americans have gone to avoid taxes point to the
complexities Congress will confront as it embarks on comprehensive tax
restructuring. Fully 45 percent of Americans who’ve taken advantage of the IRS’s tax amnesty program held accounts in Switzerland.
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Message edited by inbluevt - Friday, 2013/07/05, 7:30 PM |
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