UBS Charged With Tax Fraud In France

@AFP
UBS Charged With Tax Fraud In France

Paris (AFP) – Swiss bank UBS was on Wednesday charged with tax fraud in Paris for allegedly helping rich French clients to hide money in Switzerland, a judicial source said.

The bank, which was already under investigation for illegal solicitation of customers in France, will now have to pay a total bail of 1.1 billion euros ($1.5 billion), the source told AFP.

UBS’s Swiss business is suspected of illegally canvassing French customers and setting up dual accounts to hide the movement of capital into Switzerland.

The judicial source said the charges relate to money kept in accounts in Switzerland between 2004 and 2012. A probe was launched after former UBS employees blew the whistle.

The ACP, the Bank of France’s regulatory arm, had been alerted to the undeclared accounts between 2002 and 2007.

According to judicial sources, the new bail is equivalent to 42.6 percent of USB’s after-tax profits last year and 2.8 percent of shareholder funds.

The move by Paris comes amid a global clampdown on tax evasion by authorities around the world.

This week Credit Suisse said it lost 700 million Swiss Francs ($775 million, 576 million euros) in the second quarter of the year after paying a $2.6 billion fine for tax evasion to the U.S.

On Monday, the OECD said countries had identified an estimated 37 billion euros of hidden taxes through voluntary disclosure by more than half a million taxpayers in recent years.

AFP Photo/Fabrice Coffini

Start your day with National Memo Newsletter

Know first.

The opinions that matter. Delivered to your inbox every morning

How A Stuttering President Confronts A Right-Wing Bully

Donald Trump mocks Joe Biden’s stutter,” the headlines blare, and I am confronted (again) with (more) proof that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee hates people like me.

Keep reading...Show less
Trump at Trump Tower

Former President Donald Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan

NEW YORK, March 25 (Reuters) - Donald Trump faces a Monday deadline to post a bond to cover a $454 million civil fraud judgment or face the risk of New York state seizing some of his marquee properties.Trump, seeking to regain the presidency this year, must either pay the money out of his own pocket or post a bond while he appeals Justice Arthur Engoron's February 16 judgment against him for manipulating his net worth and his family real estate company's property values to dupe lenders and insurers.

Keep reading...Show less
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}