UBS Client Arrested For Tax Evasion In Florida

Rachel Walsh

3 April 2009

Federal authorities have arrested a wealthy US client of UBS on charges of tax evasion, according to the New York Times. Steven Michael Rubinstein, an accountant, was arrested in Florida on Thursday and charged with filing a fraudulent tax return, the paper said.

The arrest is the first of a US client of UBS, which has been under criminal investigation for helping scores of wealthy US citizens evade taxes through secret offshore accounts that went unreported to the Internal Revenue Service.

It signals that federal authorities are making good on a promise to pursue American clients suspected of tax evasion, and in some cases to make indictments.

UBS admitted in February to conspiracy to defraud the IRS by helping scores of wealthy Americans hide nearly $20 billion overseas. The bank paid $780 million to settle criminal charges. UBS has moved to stop offering offshore financial banking to US clients.

The case has helped to open the world of bank secrecy, eroding not only the strict rules for which Switzerland is famed, but by putting jurisdictions around the globe under the spotlight.

The arrest came as a result of client documents and data on Mr Rubinstein that UBS turned over to federal authorities as part of the deal.

Mr Rubinstein had an account with UBS worth at least $6 million, including stock and gold coins worth $2 million, according to court papers. He holds both United States and South African passports.

A federal magistrate judge set a bail bond hearing for Tuesday. Federal authorities had been prepared to offer Mr Rubinstein the opportunity to post bond but changed their minds based on what the court papers said were Mr Rubinstein’s false statements to authorities over the last year.

Mr Rubinstein, the papers said, worked for an international company, most recently out of Coral Gables that helped wealthy US citizens buy, sell and build yachts.

From 2001 to 2008, according to court documents, Mr Rubinstein regularly met with private bankers for UBS at the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair - a popular recruiting ground for UBS bankers - at a shopping centre in West Palm Beach, at restaurants across south Florida and at his residence.

According to the report, he planned to use a part of his UBS accounts to build a house in Florida, and transferred money from his offshore UBS account to accounts at another bank in Monaco and in New York.

The transfers moved through an entity called Hybridge International Limited that Mr Rubinstein had set up in the British Virgin Islands in 2001, the court filing said. Prosecutors accused Mr Rubinstein of filing a false 2007 federal income tax return that omitted his offshore holdings, the NYT said.