Legal

NY Former Lawyer Jailed For Tax Evasion Via Offshore Accounts

Tom Burroughes Group Editor 23 January 2012

NY Former Lawyer Jailed For Tax Evasion Via Offshore Accounts

An 82-year-old former New York lawyer who has been barred from the profession has been jailed for 45 days for using an offshore UBS account, Bloomberg reported.

Kenneth Heller, who pleaded guilty in June to three counts of tax evasion for the years 2006, 2007 and 2008, was sentenced by US District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan last week. The parties agreed that the amount of taxes Heller avoided was between $400,000 and $1 million.

The report is the latest to chronicle UBS’ problems in the US. In 2009, the Swiss bank settled criminal and civil legal charges stemming from accusations it had helped US citizens evade taxes. The US anti-evasion net has widened: other banks, not just Swiss, are said to be under investigation. The US, along with other countries, has been waging an increasingly determined war against alleged tax dodgers as they try to plug massive holes in public finances.

Heller, who faced as long as 15 years in prison, has cancer, memory loss and other physical and mental problems, according to a defense filing in which his lawyers asked that he not be imprisoned, the news service said.

He was one of seven ex-clients of Zurich-based UBS arrested on the same day in 2010 and charged with hiding more than $100 million from the IRS.

The man cooperated with prosecutors, who this month charged three Wegelin & Co bankers with conspiring to help US clients hide more than $1.2 billion from the tax authorities. Heller provided information supporting the charges, Assistant US Attorney David Massey said in a sentencing memorandum filed with the court, the report said.

A separate news report, not quoting named sources, by Tages-Anzeiger, a Swiss publication, said that there is a secret list that shows to which banks US clients of UBS transferred their money.

Reports quoted a UBS spokesperson as saying the bank has not handed over “institution-specific” information to the US.

UBS declined to comment when contacted by this publication. The Zurich-listed bank no longer provides offshore banking services to US clients, as has been the case with a number of other Swiss banks for many months now.

 

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