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Senator Grassley Stands Up For UBS Whistleblower |
U.S. government "doing next to nothing" to stop tax evasion
Washington, D.C. June 8, 2010. Senator Chuck Grassley has expressed his outrage at the U.S. government's handling of information provided by UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld. He sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of the Treasury demanding that the IRS provide him with a "detailed listing of all steps IRS has taken with the information Mr. Birkenfeld provided."
Senator Grassley expressed his concern that the IRS "is doing next to
nothing to identify tax evasion by U.S. taxpayers," and pointed out that
the information Bradley Birkenfeld provided "would allow the IRS to
trace individuals in the U.S. that had UBS bank accounts."
Lindsey M. Williams, Advocacy Director at the National Whistleblowers
Center, said:
"We completely agree with Senator Grassley that U.S. taxpayers deserve
to know what's happened with the valuable information Bradley Birkenfeld
brought forward, and insist that the U.S. government act by conducting a
full criminal investigation of UBS USA. We hope three years after the
Department of Justice dropped the ball on this investigation, that the
Treasury Department and the IRS will finally finish what Mr. Birkenfeld
started, and hold tax criminals accountable for their actions."
Senator Grassley's letter comes in the wake
of a vote by the Swiss parliament that rejected a deal between the
Department of Justice and UBS, in which UBS had agreed to turn over the
names of 4,450 U.S. citizens who held secret and illegal bank accounts
at UBS.
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