What do you do if the Internal Revenue service is after you for not properly filing your assets stored in offshore accounts located in Switzerland (or any other tax haven)? One would think turn yourself in and maybe in return for such candor (well, partial candor, I mean, you were evading taxes) the I.R.S might be lenient on you. Well, some of the 52,000 Americans who stand to pay heavy taxes and penalties, and do hard time in jail thought it would be a better idea if they sued UBS.
The U.S. account holders at UBS sued the financial giant in Swiss federal court trying to hinder their names from being revealed. And no doubt also enstating their Swiss financial secrecy rights to escape censure from the United States Justice Department. I guess the American “black account” holders thought that because tax evasion isn’t a crime in Switzerland, (and that is where their accounts are located) that maybe, just maybe, they would get away with it here. And yes, you read that correctly. Tax evasion isn’t a crime in Switzerland. Tax evasion and its definition is a matter of semantics to the Swiss. They distinguish evasion from fraud to make it seem like the former is not as bad as we think it is.
But what the dozen (possibly part of the 285 naughty little boys and girls?) who filed the suit but were promptly turned in didn’t realize is, that the U.S. government holds the bigger bargaining chip. It’s called a banking license, and if the U.S. rescinds that, UBS stands to lose billions of dollars of business, fraudulent or not.
So with its bargaining chip in hand the U.S. went after its first fraudulent filcher. And who was the lucky winner? Mr. Steven Michael Rubinstein , and ironically he’s an accountant (laugh out loud) who aside from being great with numbers (but poor with taxes) helped other wealthy Americans build and sell yachts. Mr. Rubinstein was arrested in Boca Raton, FL and was released on a 12 million dollar bail (chump change compared to the taxes he’s avoided). The exorbitant amount of bail is because the wealthy accountant is considered a flight risk having both South African citizenship and a home in Israel. So now that they have their first penny pilferer, what’s (or who’s) next for the I.R.S? In the words of Rod Roddy (infamous game show announcer), “Robert Moran, come on down, you’re the next crook going down for tax evasion…”
