Billionaire Tax Felon Says UBS Lied in Pledge to Report to IRS

[Joanne98]

June 8 (Bloomberg) -- California billionaire Igor Olenicoff had already invested $200 million with UBS AG in 2001 when his Swiss bankers ushered him to an underground vault in Geneva.

Olenicoff, a real estate developer with a taste for yachts and Russian art, saw floor upon floor of safe-deposit boxes. His private banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, and a colleague showed Olenicoff his own space for valuables.

“They said, ‘Whatever you want -- corporate stock, cash, gold, silver -- put it in here,’” says Olenicoff, 66, at the Newport Beach, California, headquarters of Olen Properties Corp., the company he founded in 1973. “It was that aura of legitimacy and secrecy. They say, ‘We’re the world’s largest wealth manager,’ so how do you question?”

Birkenfeld, 44, had spent years wooing Olenicoff, visiting his homes in Laguna Beach, California, and Lighthouse Point, Florida; cruising on his 147-foot (45-meter) yacht to Mayan ruins in Honduras; and flying on his Cessna Citation II jet.

Four years later, both men are admitted felons. Since December 2007, the billionaire and his banker have pleaded guilty to tax crimes.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ax6qczN4F3Mw

[KansDem]

1. Aren't there something like 50,000 American accounts in this bank?

I wonder how much money there is to be had by these tax cheats. Might be enough to pay for their fucking "War on Terror"™

[Hassin Bin Sober]

2. WTF

UBS’s chairman, apologized in a statement on Feb. 18 for the bank’s wrongdoing.

‘Full Responsibility’

“UBS sincerely regrets the compliance failures in its U.S. cross-border business,”

STFU! You are sorry you got caught. Seriously. An apology?

“Very few people would have imagined the level of complicity of the UBS bankers and executives,” says Josh Ungerman, a tax lawyer at Meadows, Collier, Reed, Cousins & Blau LLP in Dallas. “It’s almost unbelievable that a major worldwide bank that was as well respected would have employees engage in that type of behavior.”

Really? You're "sorry"?