Financial Transparency Coalition

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of the Swiss bank giant and scandal headliner UBS. The scandal broke early this year when the IRS caught wind that Swiss bankers were traveling to the U.S. and systematically offering wealthy Americans the opportunity to evade taxes in Swiss banks. In addition, UBS formed offshore non-U.S. companies for investor’s assets and then engaged in an aggressive cover-up to conceal these activities. The Bank pled guilty to the criminal charges, was fined $780 million and forced to hand over 250 names of tax-evading Americans. Next there was the civil case held...

ZURICH (Reuters) - The United States and Switzerland are expected to reach a final settlement on Friday to end a tax row against giant UBS, but details of the deal won't be made public the same day, sources familiar with the situation said.

There's been some very disappointing news over the past 24 hours leaking out of the UBS settlement negotiations indicating that the Swiss banking giant will not be forced to pay a fine in the case and will only be required to reveal roughly 5,000 names - a fraction of the 52,000o offshore UBS accounts controlled by Americans in Switzerland. If this indeed is what the final settlement includes, then it will be a sad day for justice. Indeed the Swiss are even admitting that this settlement plan would do nothing to impart Swiss banking secrecy. From the...

The proposed resolution to a U.S. government demand for information about thousands of Americans suspected of using Swiss accounts to evade taxes would leave Swiss bank secrecy intact, a top Swiss official has said.