"One wonders if Phil Gramm has been made just a tad nervous by the news on Tuesday that one of UBS's super-wealthy private clients has pleaded guilty to tax evasion. That's the second case in two weeks involving the bank at which the former senator is a vice chairman, and 100 other clients are under investigation for possible bank-assisted tax fraud.
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The complicity of top executives in this far-ranging scheme to use foreign tax havens to cheat the US treasury of billions in uncollected taxes was noted at the time in a Justice Department statement: "Swiss bankers routinely traveled to the United States to market Swiss bank secrecy to United States clients interested in attempting to evade United States income taxes."
What did Gramm think all of those Swiss bankers from his firm were doing over here? Was he totally clueless?
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As a top government regulator, Wendy Gramm changed the rules to make Enron's chicanery possible, and as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Phil codified those rule changes into federal law. While Enron execs like Chairman Ken Lay (a major Gramm campaign contributor) were indicted, the charmed couple that created the loopholes Lay and others jumped through escaped legal responsibility.
After leaving the government, Wendy Gramm joined Enron's board, where she headed the audit committee that managed to avoid auditing the company's disgraceful accounting procedures--just as her husband has apparently looked the other way during his stint in the private sector with UBS. ...
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