Guy Who Helped UBS Clients Avoid Paying Taxes, Ratted Out Colleagues To IRS Would Like Reward For A Job Well Done

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Bradley Birkenfeld was sentenced in August to more than three years in prison for helping some people not pay their taxes during his time as a private banker at UBS. That's fine, and he accepts that. What Birkenfeld does not accept, however, is a bull shit claim by the Internal Revenue Service that they don't owe him any money for helping build a case against the Swiss bank, and what appears to be less than a veiled threat that they won't have a check waiting for him when he gets out of the joint. His representation agrees.

Birkenfeld lawyer Dean Zerbe of Zerbe, Fingeret, Frank & Jadav said his client is entitled to a piece of the U.S. government's $780 million settlement with UBS, and that he also has a claim to a portion of the money the IRS recovers from wealthy Americans who hid assets in offshore accounts -- both at UBS and at other banks.

Zerbe also makes a seriously bold claim that while probably difficult to prove could make Birkenfeld's case.

"He didn't just give them a piece of the puzzle. He gave them the entire puzzle," Mr. Zerbe said. "They didn't know how to spell UBS until he showed up."

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It's Possible A Bunch Of Employees At UBS Deutschland Helped Clients Evade German Taxes

The bank has ran its own internal investigation and found no evidence of wrongdoing but prosecutors are still going to take a look-see themselves. The investigation, being conducted by economic-crimes prosecutors in Mannheim, was started in March against unnamed employees after a tax inquiry in the southwestern state of Baden Wuerttemberg identified suspicious transfers of funds from Germany to Switzerland, allegedly executed by a German taxpayer with the assistance of the Frankfurt-based office of UBS Deutschland AG...In May, prosecutors seized more than 100,000 computer files and other records during a search of the bank's Frankfurt office, Mr. Lintz said. Tax investigators are assessing this material to identify evidence that bank officials acted as accessories to tax evasion, he said. In its statement, UBS Deutschland said that "an internal investigation into the specific allegations has not identified any evidence of misbehavior by UBS Deutschland AG." It said it is cooperating with the criminal investigation. Several investigations of UBS clients in Germany are under way by local prosecutors independent of the Mannheim investigation, Mr. Lintz said. He declined to say how many clients are under investigation. A report in the Thursday edition of German newspaper Stuttgarter Nachrichten said thousands of bank clients are under investigation. Mr. Lintz declined to confirm that figure. Germany Probes UBS Staff on Tax-Evasion Allegations [WSJ]