Free Republic

Federal regulators should consider revoking the US banking license of the giant Swiss Bank UBS because of its role in helping wealthy Americans evade billions of dollars in taxes, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) told ABC News today. "I don't think that any bank that goes to the extent that UBS has gone through to avoid doing what their agreements with the United States require them to do, should be allowed to continue to do business unless they clean up their act," Levin said. UBS's role in arranging "undeclared" accounts for an estimated 19,000 US citizens was one focus of a...

ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) -- Swiss bank UBS AG said Tuesday it expected to post first quarter net losses of 12 billion Swiss francs (US$12.1 billion; euro7.65 billion) and would seek 15 billion Swiss francs (US$15.1 billion; euro9.55 billion) in new capital. Switzerland's largest bank, which has been hard hit by the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, also said it sees losses and writedowns of approximately US$19 billion (euro12 billion) on U.S. real estate and related credit positions. Chairman Marcel Ospel will not seek re-election at the April 23 annual general assembly of shareholders and will be succeeded by Peter Kurer, who...

GENEVA — Like Paul Revere, Konrad Hummler sounded the alarm last week as he made his way by train and by plane to his bank’s branches across Switzerland. This country’s storied role as secret banker to the world’s wealthy is under threat like never before, Mr. Hummler warned. Mr. Hummler, the jaunty, blunt-spoken managing partner of Wegelin & Company, a small private bank in St. Gallen, has watched a German tax-evasion scandal evolve into a debate about banking secrecy here. Worried that the treasured discretion of Swiss banks is under assault, Wegelin’s foreign clients have been inquiring about their money....

VANCOUVER -- Austrian businessmen Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and Otto Pick transferred ownership of their sugar refinery to a Swiss bank for safekeeping shortly before fleeing the Nazis in March, 1938. Months later, the bank actively co-operated in the sale of the Jewish businessmen's shares in the sugar refinery to a Nazi purchaser at a small fraction of their value and without the businessmen's consent. After 67 years, the theft of the sugar refinery, which provided 20 per cent of Austria's sugar before the war, had become a piece of family folklore only vaguely remembered by some of the descendants. But in...

For a variety of reasons, there is a lot of enthusiasm and optimism surrounding the death of Palestinian Authority (''PA'') leader, Yasser Arafat, and how his demise might advance an expeditious resolution of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. To be sure, I would love to jump on this bandwagon, and offer another in a litany of cheery op-eds issued internationally since the passing of the former leader of the PLO. However, though I agree that Arafat has been a huge stumbling block to peace in this region that has now been removed, it is unquestionably much more than just him that has...

NEW YORK - A federal judge said Swiss banks are trying to "delay justice and prevent access to the truth" in their arguments to limit access to information about Holocaust victims' bank accounts during the Nazi era. Actions by the banks "bring to mind the theory that if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," Judge Edward Korman of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn wrote in a decision released Thursday. In the decision, reported in Saturday's editions of The New York Times, Korman wrote, "The 'big lie' for the Swiss...