Financial Transparency Coalition

ALEXANDRIA, VA. -- Jurors in the federal corruption trial of former Rep. William Jefferson completed a third day of deliberations Monday without reaching a verdict, extending a nervous time for everyone involved.

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.

There is much speculation about the nature of the deal the US has come to with Switzerland over the UBS case and the US demand for 52,000 names concerning accounts they think might have resulted in US tax abuse. No one knows what the agreement is, but there’s lots of noise. In that there’s considerable spin going on. I can say one thing for sure: the US won’t get what it asked for and Switzerland will claim it’s banking secrecy will survive. The latter claim seems unlikely to be true. First, it’s thought that maybe 5,000 names will be given....

Bloomberg -- Prosecutors in Los Angeles leveled charges in 2007 that sound like headlines in a fresh New Jersey corruption scandal: Rabbis in Brooklyn, New York, laundered money for an undercover informant, arranged phony charitable gifts and used secret Israeli bank accounts.