Raids have
been staged across Germany against hundreds of suspected tax evaders.
Prosecutors in Bochum city who coordinated Monday's action say the tips came
from a CD listing German clients of the Swiss bank UBS.
Fifty tax
inspectors and numerous prosecutors had visited the homes and business of
"several hundred" suspects in many of Germany's 16 regional states,
said Bernd Bieniossek, a leading prosecutor in the western German city.
Reacting on
Monday, the Zurich-based UBS said 2009 had been a watershed and since then it had
avoided aiding cross-border tax evaders. In August, UBS's new chief Axel Weber
said his bank had "zero tolerance" for tax fraud.
Germany's
mass tabloid newspaper "Bild" broke the raids story on Monday, saying
the latest data CD was one of six purchased since 2010 by the Düsseldorf-based
finance ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) state. Detectives had obtained
the CD three months ago, Bild said.
Bieniossek
said that CD also contained details of trust accounts that suspects might have
used in Switzerland to evade tax payments in Germany.
Tax treaty
wrangle unresolved
NRW's
Social Democrat (SPD)-led government, notably Finance Minister Norbert
Walter-Borjans, has repeatedly defended such CD purchases despite criticism
from Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right coalition government.
For months,
Merkel's federal finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has sought to finalize a
tax treaty with Switzerland which would collect back-dated tax on Germany's
behalf. But this move has been blocked in Germany's upper house of parliament
by regional states governed by the SPD and the Greens.
UBS long
under scrutiny
NRW's
finance ministry said probes and self-imposed charges filed by suspected tax
evaders since 2010 had generated more than three billion euros ($3.8 billion)
in extra revenues. It said the six CDs had also listed clients of the banks
Julius Bär and Credit Suisse.
Last
Friday, Mannheim prosecutors said that since March they had investigated claims
that UBS customers' funds might have been moved through an internal account
from Germany to Switzerland.
UBS replied
that its own internal investigations had "not revealed any indication of
misconduct on the part of UBS Deutschland AB."
Authorities
raided the UBS's Frankfurt premises in May and seized electronic records, which
are still being evaluated.
Switzerland's
long tradition of banking secrecy has come under increasing pressure within
Europe and the United States. A 2008 US tax probe resulted in heavy
fines.
ipj/dr (AP, Reuters, AFP)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.