As we reported in the current November/December 2008 issue, UBS is being pursued by the IRS and Department of Justice for helping American clients evade taxes on some $20 billion offshore assets. News today is yet another banker, Raoul Weil, has been indicted. Though the indictment does not mention UBS by name, the Washington Post reported that Weil headed UBS’s wealth management department from 2002 through 2007.
UBS recently complied with IRS and Department of Justice requests for specific names of American clients with offshore accounts. It gave the names of 70 US customers (out of an estimated 20,000) to the agencies Monday, and the IRS independently found 30 more names. Though UBS has said it will no longer offer offshore accounts to US citizens, its continued pursuit by the DOJ and the IRS, along with Barack Obama’s condemnation of UBS as a “tax cheat,” shows some stormy skies ahead for the company’s incredibly profitable wealth management division.
