(Reuters) -
U.S. prosecutors accused three Swiss bankers on Tuesday of conspiring with
wealthy U.S. taxpayers to hide more than $1.2 billion in assets from tax
authorities, and sources briefed on the matter said the three worked for
Wegelin & Co, one of Switzerland's oldest private banks.
The office
of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney said in a statement that the indictment charges
the bankers with trying to "capture business lost by UBS AG and another
large international Swiss bank in the wake of widespread news reports that the
Internal Revenue Service was investigating UBS" in 2008 and 2009.
While Wegelin
was not identified in the indictment filed against Michael Berlinka, Urs Frei
and Roger Keller, the three men, who reside in Switzerland, worked for Wegelin
and sold tax evasion services from the bank's Zurich office, the sources said.
The
charges, which come amid a broad criminal investigation by U.S. authorities
into Swiss and Swiss-style banks that sold tax evasion services to rich
Americans, signal that U.S. authorities are moving closer to criminal charges
against some of those banks, the sources said.
Wegelin
does not have a United States presence, and the bank carried out its work for
U.S. clients through a Stamford, Conn., branch of UBS AG, the giant Swiss bank,
according to the indictment. Wegelin "directly accessed the U.S. banking
system through a correspondent bank account held at UBS AG," which the
indictment said was in Stamford, Conn.
Wegelin
could not immediately be reached for comment.
U.S.
authorities, who suspect that tens of thousands of Americans have been using
Swiss banks to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes, are investigating
scores of Swiss banks and international banks with Swiss operations.
The
investigations, an outgrowth of scrutiny of UBS, are focused on Credit Suisse
AG, HSBC Holdings Plc and Basler Kantonalbank, among others. In 2009, UBS paid
$780 million to settle Justice Department criminal charges that the bank helped
thousands of U.S. clients hide $20 billion in their accounts.
Swiss
authorities want a global civil settlement with U.S. authorities in which the
entire Swiss banking industry would pay a fine and shutter their undisclosed
private banking services for Americans.
If
convicted, the bankers face a maximum prison term of five years under the
conspiracy charge.
(Reporting
by Lynnley Browning in New Haven, Connecticut, and Grant McCool in New York;
Editing by Bernard Orr and Howard Goller)
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