The three accused bankers charged in a New York indictment of hide more than US$1.2 billion of taxpayer assets from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) worked for Wegelin & Co, one of Switzerland’s oldest private banks, said sources briefed on the matter.
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The bankers include Michael Berlinka, Urs Frei and Roger Keller who allegedly conspired with their US clients to hide the existence of bank accounts and the income they generated from the IRS.
The defendants who reside in Switzerland engaged in the conspiracy in 2008 and 2009 when UBS and other large international Swiss bank came under the IRS scanner for helping US taxpayers evade taxes and hide assets in Swiss bank accounts.
The "Swiss Bank A", an identified in the court procedure, came on the scene as the bank was not operating in the US and the US taxpayer-clients were told that their undeclared accounts at Swiss Bank A would not be disclosed to the US authorities because Swiss Bank A had a long tradition of bank secrecy.
According to the indictment, Wegelin (Swiss bank A) is a small bank owned by its managing partners and it carried out its work for approximately 100 US clients through a Stamford, Connecticut, branch of UBS.
The bankers accessed the US banking system through a correspondent bank account held at UBS to get to the clients.
If convicted in the US they would face maximum term of five years in prison.
