UBS director charged with tax evasion
One of the UBS board directors has been charged with tax evasion in the US
A senior member of the UBS executive board
was charged with tax evasion yesterday during an ongoing investigation by the US
Department of Justice of allegations the Swiss bank helped clients avoid taxes.
Raoul Weil, a Swiss citizen and the UBS chairman and chief executive of
global wealth management, is accused of helping 20,000 American UBS customers
hide $20bn (£13.3bn) of assets from the Internal Revenue Service, which could
put him in prison for a maximum of five years and a earn him a $250,000 fine.
Weil, who sits on the bank’s group executive board, the most senior
management level below its main board of directors, oversaw UBS’s cross-border
private banking business, the unit at the centre of the continuing
investigation, between 2002 and 2007.
UBS said Weil had decided that, in the interest of the firm and its clients,
and in order to defend himself, he would ‘relinquish his duties at this time,
pending the resolution of this matter’.
Further reading:
UBS looks to settle private banking tax issues