Banco UBS penalizado por promover la evasión fiscal

El banco suizo UBS pagará 780 millones de dólares a la Hacienda americana como compensación por haber facilitado la evasión fiscal a 17.000 ciudadanos estadounidenses. Una mala noticia para los que creemos que el crimen es confiscar por la fuerza una porción de tus ingresos, no intentar eludir esa confiscación.

Precisamente esta mañana he empezado el último libro de David Friedman, Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World, que entre otros temas explora las implicaciones positivas o negativas que los avances tecnológicos en el ámbito de la privacidad y la vigilancia pueden tener para la libertad. Si el caso que nos ocupa es sintomático de una tendencia significaría que nos movemos en la dirección de menos secretismo y privacidad, y más control por parte del Estado. Puede que haya corrientes en sentido opuesto, pero noticias como ésta no dejan de ser preocupantes.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Banking giant UBS has agreed to pay $780 million and turn over once-secret Swiss banking records to settle allegations it conspired to defraud the U.S. government of taxes owed by thousands of American clients.

As part of the deal struck in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., UBS has made the unprecedented step of agreeing to immediately turn over to the U.S. government account information for U.S. customers of the bank's cross-border business.

In doing so, federal authorities have struck a big crack in Switzerland's vaunted bank secrecy laws.

UBS will pay $780 million in fines, penalties, interest and restitution for conspiring to create sham accounts to hide the assets of U.S. clients from the U.S. government. (...)

About 17,000 American clients concealed their UBS accounts from the IRS, hiding total assets of roughly $20 billion, U.S. officials said.

According to U.S. officials, when an acquisition in 2000 of a U.S. company brought UBS a host of new, American clients, the bank set about to evade new reporting requirements for those clients. To do so, UBS executives helped U.S. taxpayers open new accounts in the names of sham entities.

Prosecutors contend that UBS executives used encrypted software and other counter-surveillance techniques to prevent anyone from detecting that they were actively marketing such Swiss bank secrecy -- and tax evasion -- to American taxpayers.

(gracias Manuel)