Another American UBS client receives heavy fine
10 March 2011
A US court has ordered a Seattle businessman
to pay a $2.1 million tax penalty for concealing large sums in
various UBS bank accounts.
Arthur Eisenberg first opened a bank account
at UBS' Cayman Islands division in 1983, and later shifted the
assets to an account in his own name at the Zurich parent bank.
In 2004, he moved the assets from that account
to a new UBS account in the name of a sham Hong Kong company he had
formed, East West Universal Limited.
The contents of Eisenberg's various accounts
grew from $3.1 million at the end of 2004 to $4.2 million by 2007.
In 2008 he closed the account and transferred the proceeds to
another large Swiss bank headquartered in Zurich, who the
Department of Justice has not yet named.
Eisenberg admitted filing a misleading tax
return and failing to submit a FBAR form disclosing his foreign
accounts. He could have been jailed for up to three years, but was
instead put on probation.
In another, unrelated, case, one Edward Gurary
of Ohio has admitted to holding undeclared bank accounts with
"significant assets" at both UBS and Credit Suisse.
Gurary held the UBS account between 2002 to
2008 in the name of a Bahamian company, Demko, the Department of
Justice said. The balance ranged from half a million to nearly a
million dollars, earning interest payments between $3,400 and
$21,000.
According to the DoJ, he controlled the
account by sending faxes, labelled with a code name, from a public
bureau to UBS. These were then forwarded to Demko staff to make it
look like Demko owned and controlled the account.
Sources
US Department of Justice
(Eisenberg sentencing)
USDOJ
(Eisenberg plea)
Dow Jones (Gurary plea)
USDOJ
(Gurary charges)