Carl Levin is Seriously Pissed at the Swiss

Senator Carl “Shitty Deal” Levin has blasted the Swiss government withholding the names of withholding the names of certain UBS clients suspected of opening Swiss bank accounts to evade U.S. taxes. The Swiss lower house voted today to reject a U.S.-Swiss treaty that would have turned over about 4.450 out of the 52,000 UBS clients the Uncle Sam suspects of tax evasion.

Author:
Zachery Kouwe
Updated:
Jan 14, 2019
Original:
Jun 8, 2010

Senator Carl “Shitty Deal” Levin has blasted the Swiss government for withholding the names of certain UBS clients suspected of opening Swiss bank accounts to evade U.S. taxes. The Swiss lower house voted today to reject a U.S.-Swiss treaty that would have forced UBS to turn over 4,450 out of the 52,000 UBS clients Uncle Sam suspects of tax evasion.

“Rejection of the treaty is an international embarrassment that can be laid at the feet of Swiss legislators who are willing to continue to allow their banks to facilitate U.S. tax evasion,” Levin said in a statement.

“After a year of delay, in August 2009, a settlement was reached in which the United States agreed to give up its right to all 52,000 names in exchange for getting prompt access to information on key accounts, estimated at 4,450 or less than ten percent of the total. Now the Swiss, despite multiple U.S. concessions and having strung out the UBS case for two years, have failed to live up to their end of the bargain,” he added.

Levin called for a court summons to force UBS to turn over the names of all 52,000 tax cheats. (Tim Geithner not included.)

The euro keeps diving to new lows and currency traders are hoping someone, (perhaps the Swiss) will step in to stop the bleeding

Getty Images

UBS is having an identity crisis.

Remember Bradley Birkenfeld? He's the guy who single-handedly made the U.S. government’s case against UBS and forced the Swiss bank to hand over the names of thousands of tax cheats, which resulted in the US scoring $780 million from UBS and may have inspired some 33,000 Americans to "voluntarily disclose offshore accounts to the IRS, generating more than $5 billion." And yet, despite his assistance, Birkenfeld wasn't immediately thanked for a job well done. Instead, he was sentenced to forty months in prison (fair-ish, considering he showed a few clients how to avoid paying taxes himself) and told to piss off by the Internal Revenue Service, from whom he sought an award, because he was "not forthcoming about his own role in the scheme," even as a Justice Department attorney admitted that "...without Mr. Birkenfeld walking into the door of the Department of Justice in the summer of 2007, I doubt as of today that this massive fraud would have been discovered by the US government" (or as his lawyer put it, "They didn't know how to spell UBS until he showed up. He didn't just give them a piece of the puzzle. He gave them the entire puzzle"). Now, after doing 32 months at Schuylkill Federal Correctional Institution, getting let out early on account of "good-time credit," and living in a halfway house in New Hampshire, Birkenfeld has finally been thrown a bone. Bradley Birkenfeld, the former UBS AG banker who told the Internal Revenue Service how the bank helped thousands of Americans evade taxes, secured an IRS award of $104 million, an amount his lawyers said may be the largest ever for a U.S. whistle-blower. Birkenfeld told authorities how UBS bankers came to the U.S. to woo rich Americans, managed $20 billion of their assets, and helped them cheat the IRS. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2008, a year after reporting the bank’s conduct to the Justice Department, U.S. Senate, IRS and Securities and Exchange Commission. He was released from prison Aug. 1...Birkenfeld, 47, worked at Zurich-based UBS, the largest Swiss bank, for five years. He sought a reward from the IRS of as much as 30 percent of any taxes the agency recovered as a result of his whistle-blowing activities. Clearly this whole thing should stir up a few questions inside you all, chief among them: how much money would it take to get you to befriend or get yourself employed with some rogue people so you can blow the whistle on them? Would you do any time for it? If so, how much? And are we talking Club Fed or a place where your roommate spoons you every night? UBS Whistle-Blower Secures $104 Million Award From IRS [Bloomberg]

We knew top-ranked UBS analyst Glenn Schorr was poking around for a new gig and today we learn he’s landed at Nomura Securities to lead their financial services coverage.

CLOSE

CLOSE

CLOSE

CLOSE