UBS whistle blower, Bradley Birkenfeld: DOJ didn't do basically anything. Largest tax evasion scheme in the history of world. No one blamed but the whistle blower.
DoJ didn't want to touch because it would have indicted EVERYONE on top of US. 19,000 names
45 min video interview
https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHY49Rjoe6w
wikileaks, global intelligence files
https:// wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/11/1184575_re-discussion-switzerland-econ-ubs-will-disclose-names-pay.html
Since at least 1999, UBS held billions of dollars for U.S. clients in accounts in Switzerland and other overseas locations while ignoring requirements that it register with the SEC, the agency said in a civil lawsuit in federal court in Washington.
The bank's Swiss advisers traveled to the U.S. a few times a year to solicit customers at art shows, as well as yachting and other sporting events, the SEC said. To conceal their activities, advisers carried encrypted laptop computers and got training from the bank on avoiding detection, the agency said.
UBS settled the probes after a series of disclosures that followed the guilty plea last June of a former private banker, Bradley Birkenfeld.
The company reaped $200 million a year by helping high- income clients through such practices as setting up sham entities in tax havens including Switzerland, Panama, the British Virgin Islands, Hong Kong and Liechtenstein, Birkenfeld said in pleading guilty in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.
A Breakthrough
The bank helped Americans evade taxes even after signing a 2001 agreement that required it to identify account holders and their income to U.S. authorities, according to prosecutors. Birkenfeld said many clients refused to disclose their assets because it would defeat the purpose of banking with UBS – evading taxes.
UBS announced it was ending its cross-border business in July at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations where the company was criticized for sending bankers to the U.S. to woo wealthy Americans. The announcement yesterday precedes another subcommittee hearing set for Feb. 24.
The agreement is "a tremendous breakthrough in the national effort to combat offshore secrecy and tax abuse," said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who leads the subcommittee. "Efforts to tear away the offshore cloak of secrecy are gradually succeeding."
In November, Switzerland-based UBS executive Raoul Weil was indicted in Florida on a charge that he helped rich Americans evade taxes. Weil attorney Aaron Marcu said it was "extremely disappointing" that the government did not drop its case.
"Mr. Weil is an innocent victim of a political dispute between the United States and Switzerland over Swiss bank secrecy," Marcu said in a statement.