WASHINGTON (AFP) — A US Senate investigative panel accused two prominent banks in Liechtenstein and Switzerland on Wednesday of helping wealthy Americans hide billions of dollars and evade taxes.
The Senate panel said its probe found that LGT Bank in Liechtenstein and UBS in Switzerland have maintained thousands of US client accounts with billions of dollars in assets that have not been disclosed the the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
"UBS alone has an estimated 19,000 accounts in Switzerland for US clients with assets valued at 18 billion dollars, and the IRS has identified at least 100 US taxpayers with accounts at LGT," the panel said in a statement.
The six-month-long investigation also discovered that the two institutions employed banking practices "that could facilitate, and have resulted in, tax evasion by their US clients," it said.
The banks help clients evade taxes by urging their American clients to open accounts in their offshore jurisdictions, assisting them in structuring them to avoid disclosure to US authorities and providing financial services in ways that do not alert the IRS to the accounts' existence, it said.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said it would release its 115-page, bipartisan investigative report during a hearing Thursday on tax haven banks.
"Tax havens are engaged in economic warfare against the United States, and the honest, hardworking American taxpayer is losing," Senator Carl Levin, the subcommittee's Democratic chairman, said in a statement.
"The iron ring of secrecy around tax haven banks and their deceptive banking practices enable and encourage tax cheats to hide assets from the United States," he said.
"Congress needs to enact strong penalties on tax haven banks that help US taxpayers avoid paying taxes to Uncle Sam."
Senator Norm Coleman, the panel's ranking Republican, said that by "exploiting gaping loopholes, these foreign banks are enabling felony tax evasion.
"Simply put, foreign banks should not be Al Capone safe-houses for evading taxes."
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