Legal

Another Former UBS Client Sentenced For Tax Fraud Charges In US - Report

Tom Burroughes Editor London 12 November 2009

Another Former UBS Client Sentenced For Tax Fraud Charges In US - Report

US yacht broker Robert Moran has been sentenced to two months in prison on tax fraud charges, making him the third former UBS client to be sentenced to prison in South Florida in the past two weeks, according to WebCPA.com.

Mr Moran had been facing a sentence of up to three years in jail, but he had cooperated with prosecutors and asked for probation. A year of probation will follow his two-month jail term, the publication said.

He pleaded guilty in April to filing a false tax return. Born in Leicester, England, Mr Moran became a US citizen in 1994.

In August, following an agreement between the Swiss and US governments, UBS moved to turn over the names of 4,450 account holders in a move seen as a historic breach of Switzerland’s bank secrecy laws. UBS no longer provides offshore banking services in the US.

Mr Moran’s name was among the approximately 250 account holders divulged under an agreement in February, the report said.

US District Judge James Cohn said that Moran had paid nearly $1.9 million in financial penalties to the US government, including a fine that equaled half the highest total of his Swiss accounts.

In late November, Jeffrey Chernick received a three-month sentence from Judge Cohn in Fort Lauderdale after he admitted to hiding $8 million in his UBS accounts. He had faced up to two years in prison, but prosecutors said he had cooperated with prosecutors and helped them build cases against UBS bankers and other clients.

And yet another UBS client, Steven Michael Rubinstein, was sentenced to a year of house arrest and probation earlier that same week. He too received credit for assisting prosecutors.

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