Free Republic

WASHINGTON--As part of the Obama Administration's aggressive efforts to enforce U.S. tax laws and reduce offshore tax evasion, the U.S. Department of the Treasury today announced the conclusion of negotiations with Switzerland to amend the U.S.-Switzerland income tax treaty to provide for increased tax information exchange. Official signing of the protocol is expected in the next few months. "This Administration is committed to reducing off shore tax evasion to help ensure that all U.S. taxpayers are playing by the same rules," said Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. "This treaty will increase our ability to enforce our tax laws and will help...

According to Japan Today, two Japanese nationals were detained by Italian financial police last week after trying to enter Switzerland with $134 billion worth of undeclared U.S. bonds, mostly Treasury bonds, an Italian daily said Wednesday. The Japanese consulate general in Milan confirmed that the detention had taken place and said it was trying to confirm with Italian authorities whether the two were indeed Japanese nationals and their identities. According to the report in il Giornale, two unidentified Japanese in their 50s concealed the bonds, including 249 U.S. Treasury bonds each worth $500 million, in a suitcase with a false...

A $235M payment by Banco Santander would return about 85% that Geneva-based Optimal Investment Services (bank's hedge fund affiliate) withdrew in the years before the fraud collapsed. $1.2B would be available to compensate Madoff's victims. A number of banks and hedge funds that steered customers into the fraud have been sued...they should have figured the operation wasn't legit. Investors who withdrew profits are asked to return the money b/c gains were fictitious. Banco Santander says clients of Optimal had $3B in presumed wealth evaporate in the fraud.

Most Americans know peaceful and prosperous Switzerland—America’s “sister republic”—for its beautiful mountains, tangy cheese, decentralized political system, and banks that pride themselves on protecting the absolute security of their depositors. Indeed, it’s illegal in Switzerland for banks to violate that privacy. But the U.S. government recently forced the Swiss government to make an exception, under threat of criminal prosecution in the United States against UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank. That bank must reveal information about as many as 300 of its American depositors who the U.S. government claims are guilty of tax evasion. Further, UBS must pay $780 million in fines....

At least Campbell Brown of CNN (http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/campbell.brown/) has mentioned it today. A.I.G. Reveals Biggest Beneficiaries of Its Rescue March 15, 2009, 5:16 pm E-mail This Update | 8:49 p.m. The American International Group on Sunday released the names of financial institutions that benefited last fall when the Federal Reserve saved it from collapse with an $85 billion rescue loan and then three subsequent bailouts. The disclosure included counterparties to both its credit default swap operations and its securities lending businesses, both of which contributed heavily to A.I.G.’s troubles, as well as to muncipalities who participated in certain investment programs. All...

ZURICH (AFP) – Two of Switzerland's largest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, are set to announce combined losses for 2008 of 29 billion Swiss francs later this week, the Sonntag newspaper reported Sunday. According to the report, UBS will announce an annual loss of 21 billion Swiss francs (14 billion euros, 18 billion dollars) on Tuesday, the largest in Swiss history and reflecting the fact the company was one of the banks hardest hit by the US subprime loan crisis. Last November, UBS posted a net profit of 296 million Swiss francs for the third quarter following a year of...

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...