The real Stanford SCANDAL is about offshore, unreported accounts.

[elehhhhna]

Mark my words -- that's the kicker here. The two Yankee players who's money's been "frozen" didn't bank directly with Stanford. They accessed their money via "credit cards issued by an entity associated with Stanford." Using the "credit card" of an offshore bank is how you SPEND your stashed money.

I hope the whole tax-fraud scam -- and all its unsavory, very public participants, is exposed soon.

[indepat]

1. So do I but in reality, the Federal government seemingly does not give a shit how much

income taxes are being avoided by corporations with offshore pseudo-addresses or individuals with offshore accounts or else the entire Federal apparatus would have been coming down on them like ugly on an ape! :P

[elehhhhna]

2. A Caymanian one told me that if we Americans had any idea

who stashes their money offshore, we'd start a revolution.

Lots of our patriotic countrymen in sports, religion, politics, entertainment, captains-of-industry...

[FarCenter]

7. Cayman is an Anglo-American haven; Switzerland is a European haven

There's a difference.

[Andy823]

3. I agree, but

The government is going after accounts that UBS has been "hiding" for a bunch of americans, and that's a start. It is doing to take some time but it can be done, and I hope that our new AG will take these crooks on.

[indepat]

4. Let's hope he takes on all crooks, war criminals, and traitors, past and present,

with a fervent zealotry. :P

[Donnachaidh]

5. I'ts not a *start* -- it's a SMOKESCREEN

250 accounts being handed over with a total of 52,000 actual accounts? Come on! It's a CYA move on the government's part. "Give us the sacrificial lambs so we can SAY we're doing our job to the public". Meanwhile the other 51,750 accounts are sitting and grinning and know there is no way the US Government is going to go after their asses.

PURE public relations - that's ALL it is. If they were REALLY going after the big guys they'd be freezing UBS accounts all over the US. They AIN'T doing that. Surprise, surprise..... :sarcasm:

[Dover]

6. The UBS disclosure will probably be the end of them...

Is Swiss banking a criminal enterprise?
Posted Feb 19th 2009 9:00AM by Peter Cohan
Filed under: Law, Scandals, Headline news

It doesn't take much imagination to see that banking could be a bit of a scam on the public. But to keep that scam going it takes big buildings, plush offices, corporate jets, complex product names . . . and a veil of secrecy. Secrecy is important because without it, the mystique is lost. And by mystique, we're sometimes talking about illegal money-making schemes.

That's what Switzerland's premier bank, UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) got caught running. And after forking over $780 million to U.S. authorities, it will have made only a small down payment on paying its penalties to society. How so? UBS is going to turn over the names of its clients to the U.S., which marks the end of a centuries-old franchise for Switzerland -- the inviolate secrecy of the Swiss bank account.

Secrecy is great for covering up crimes. You can remove money from the place you made it to avoid taxes. You can steal the money and property of people before whisking them away to concentration camps. You can even engage in all sorts of illegal enterprises like dealing drugs or stealing peoples' identities and using it to buy things with fake credit cards. Once you get that money to a secret Swiss bank account, you are free to use that money as you see fit and not pay any taxes on your ill-gotten gains.

Why did UBS agree to this deal? Prosecutors suspect that between 2000 and 2007, UBS helped American clients illegally hide $20 billion, letting them evade $300 million a year in taxes. And for this tax evasion, UBS exacted a price -- $200 million a year in profits. How did it pull it off? Prosecutors charged UBS with falsifying or not properly obtaining or filing specific tax forms required of both the bank and its clients.

UBS agreed to pay the $780 million because it's a low-priced deal: $380 million disgorges profits from UBS's cross-border business -- the additional $400 million is U.S. taxes that UBS failed to withhold on the accounts, plus interest and penalties. But if the bigger figures above are correct, between 2000 and 2007 alone, UBS made $1.6 billion while helping taxpayers evade $2.4 billion in taxes.

The only problem for UBS is that investigators are examining 19,000 accounts and UBS will need to disclose the names of hundreds of them. This is a problem for UBS because journalists will look to make their investigative bones by delving deep into the stories of each of these names. And each headline will represent bad publicity for a central tenet of Swiss banking -- the secret bank account...cont'd

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/02/19/is-swiss-banking-a-criminal-enterprise/#continued