By CURT ANDERSON,The Associated Press Friday, August 21, 2009 3:06 

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- A former banker described by prosecutors as the man most responsible for sparking a broad U.S. investigation into rich Americans' use of secret Swiss bank accounts to evade taxes was sentenced Friday to more than three years in federal prison.

Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- If he had kept his mouth shut and his head low, Bradley Birkenfeld would be a free man today. He didn't, so now the former UBS AG banker wears an electronic bracelet on his ankle and, beginning in January, will spend three years and four months in a federal penitentiary.

Two years ago almost to the day, the phone in the FT's Zurich office rang as I reached the door. "My name is Tarantula," said the mystery caller. "That is not my real name. But the information I will provide will put my life in danger and be the end of Swiss bank secrecy."

With help from a former UBS banker, the Feds are demystifying how the Swiss do business. Inside the tradecraft.

From the magazine issue dated Mar 23, 2009
Among the very rich, it's known as "the nut." That's the amount of money they need to salt away for a "rainy day"-for when the bubble bursts or the subpoenas arrive. It's enough money to keep paying for, say, the grandkids' private-school tuitions or the landscape gardener on Martha's Vineyard. ("Every Master of the Universe knows the number," wrote "The Bonfire of the Vanities" author Tom Wolfe.) Usually, the money is invested in something safe, such as T-bills. But sometimes it's sent, as they say, "offshore," stashed away in what one Swiss bank described as a "posterity fund."

In the most direct evidence yet tying UBS Chairman Peter Kurer to oversight failures at the Swiss bank, Investment News learned today that the U.S. Justice Department recently criticized as inadequate an internal investigation that he supervised. The 2006 investigation focused on whistleblower allegations that bank managers were encouraging breaches of UBS’s own written policies in helping American clients evade federal taxes, prosecutors said in an exhibit accompanying UBS’s settlement of a criminal investigation. This “limited” 2006 probe “did not examine or follow up on available evidence of private banker communications with U.S. clients,” according to the Justice Department’s Statement of Facts attached to the settlement. 

TAKE ACTION

 

 

 
TAKE ACTION

TAKE ACTION by supporting the clemency campaign for Bradley Birkenfeld! 

 

January 4, 2010 UBS Tax Evasion Blockbuster Bradley Birkenfeld's lawyer, Dean Zerbe, on Birkenfeld possibly going to jail despite being a whistleblower at UBS and helping authorities.