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UBS America Turned Into a ‘Criminal Organization’: Nachrichten, Switzerland

Posted by WILLIAM KERN in Economy, International, Places.
Aug 25th, 2009 | Comments

Now that Swiss authorities have done the unthinkable: admitted to wrongdoing and handed U.S. authorities the data on over 4,000 of its American clients – how are the people of Switzerland reacting?

If the comments of Nachrichten columnist Patrik Etschmayer are anything to go by, there’s going to be hell to pay in Geneva.

For Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper, Patrik Etschmayer describes the content of a plea agreement between the Justice Department and one of UBS’ American clients, John McCarthy:

“In these documents, UBS shows every sign of being a criminal organization, helping tax cheats move money surreptitiously skimmed off of transactions conducted in the United States by way of the Cayman Islands, and deposited in a specially established Hong Kong front company account. McCarthy’s UBS adviser – and a Swiss attorney recommended by UBS – showed him a variety of ways to hide even more money from the U.S. government – be it in a private fund in Liechtenstein, a bank account in the British Virgin Islands or a Swiss insurance policy.

“The energy devoted by UBS representatives well into 2008, to breaking the laws of another country, a country that is by all means a democracy – is startling, even shocking.”

Then, describing what should be done, Etschmayer appears to echo the anger that many Americans feel toward our banking class and institutions deemed ‘too big to fail’:

“These people dragged UBS from being a flagship bank into a basket case requiring a government bailout that threatened to pull down the entire national economy. And now its senior officials are mixed up with criminal activities, as well. It’s high time for Swiss justice to tackle the problem. Or do crimes stop being crimes when they’re committed by ’systemically important’ pillars of society?”

By Patrik Etschmayer

Translated By Patrik Etschmayer

August 18, 2009

Switzerland – Nachrichten – Original Article (German)

The plea agreement is 16 pages long and deals mostly with legal details, such as waiving the right to a proper trial – just what you’d expect to see when someone realizes that it would be best to confess so the prosecutor can dictate his conditions. Chief among which is the full disclosure of all documents and correspondences related to the crime.

Also mentioned in the document is that that the penalty was doubled due to the sophisticated methods by which the crimes were committed.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

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Father_Time

I suspect that this is just the tip of the iceberg, should other countries demand the same access to Swiss bank accounts. The Swiss banking system will just have to take the humiliation. Its high time this secrecy ended anyway. Good story.

Leonidas

I agree that money laundering should be stamped out, but often with every crime there is a cause. In the US corporate tax rates are so much higher than in most industrialized countries, and those other countries use territorial taxation and not global taxations as in the US. Thats not justification for breaking the laws, and certainly not for any money obtained by criminal means, but it is part of the cause. Additionally US tax policies cripple US companies competitively and has greatly contributed to economic downturn in the US.

I applaud the efforts to bring in these tax evaders, but as long as our corporate tax codes are so out of whack with the norms for industrialized nations, we are likely to see this type of practice continue on a grand scale. It wont disappear if we do so, but it will probably decrease. When corporations and rich individuals believe they can do well when they play by the rules, they will be less likely to break them.

DLS

What's interesting here is not that the Swiss buckled, but that the Obama people acted as soon and as harshly as they did (though what we're seeing as this year "progresses" makes it less and less of a surprise). I figured it would remain until not only the US but European governments got into much deeper distress, and were more desperate (notably, as with the onset of aging-related problems with elderly-directed social-spending programs and the effect on government finances), that they would have attacked several offshore tax havens at the same time.

Yes, the objects of hatred are crooks, but given the nature of government in so many cases like this and in so many other instances, it's worth reiterating my wistful reaction sometimes, that we can feel not only sympathetic with, say, the S&L crooks, but given the nature of the Dems and lefties so often, we can actually cheer these tax-fleeing folks heartily, hoping they're cruising the Caribbean or the South Pacific with their attractive young crew-mates of the moment.

DLS

What Scotland did with the Libyan terrorist is definitely not necessarily as bad as what the Swiss did.

DLS

"as long as our corporate tax codes are so out of whack with the norms for industrialized nations, we are likely to see this type of practice continue"

Of course. It's not just the problem of excessive taxes or tax rates, the resulting evasion of which has been judiciously addressed at least as far back as by Adam Smith. (Cigarette taxers nowadays, those who want them hyper-taxed for PC reasons, you are again warned; take note, if you can and will.) It's also the underlying attitudes and "climate," no different than how people view "climate" for business and job creation, which is why Blue Nation so often counts people and jobs among their greatest exports.

People are often ready and willing to vote NO with their feet against misconduct by state governments. It's Gresham's Law applied to the economy and society. The bad people (and bad government) drive away the good.

This has been a problem not only with older, ailing eastern Blue (Cyanide) Nation states and central cities for ages, but also for "Massachusetts Lite" California, where push factors are so often primarily motivating the "spinoff" of people and jobs from California to the rest of the western USA, and sometimes farther east.

The activists (ignoring constitutional federalism in all ways, including culturally and philosophically), who are greedy and angry, want, as has been described, to make avoidance impractical by expanding the scope of jurisdiction to the federal government, nation-wide. Or the feds independently choose to be bad.

So those who can, move their stuff offshore.

It's Gresham's Law in effect, once again.

If you think bad government and income taxation and avoidance-and-evasion is bad now, just wait and see if extremists someday push for and secure a wealth tax in addition an income tax in this country (which would be progressive, naturally, to correspond fully to the thorough injustice, envy, and resentment there).

DLS

"often with every crime there is a cause"

In the broadest, most general, most obvious case, people are choosing to flee rather than be theft victims.

Father_Time

Leonidas--

The "cause" is Greed, not the tax code.

adexterc

I earn a reasonable amount of money. I take every allowance I can but do not have lawyers and accountants at my beck and call. So I pay my taxes and I get quite a lot in return. The folks that ship their money overseas want the roads for their limos and airports for their jets but do not want to pay for them. They are the definition of greedy sociopaths.

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