The US has indicted six foreign nationals and a Swiss company on charges of a conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by concealing assets and evading taxes of an amount greater than $ 60 million, the US Justice Department said in a release.
“Audrey Strauss, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Stuart M Goldberg, Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Tax Division, and James C Lee, Chief of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (‘ IRS-CI ‘), announced today the unsealing of an Indictment charging six foreign individuals and a Swiss financial services company with conspiring to defraud the IRS by helping three high-value US taxpayer-clients conceal more than USD 60 million in income and assets held in undeclared, offshore bank accounts and to evade US income taxes, “the release said on Tuesday.
The Justice Department said between 2009 and 2014, Ivo Bechtiger, Bernhard Lampert, Peter Ruegg, Roderic Sage, Rolf Schnellmann, Daniel Walchli and the Allied Finance Trust company conspired to evade paying taxes by concealing income and assets of a number of US clients.
The defendants came up with a scheme, dubbed the “Singapore Solution,” to conceal income and assets of three US taxpayer-clients in a Swiss bank from IRS, the release said.
The main idea behind the scheme was to transfer over $ 60 million from undeclared accounts in Switzerland via a series of nominee bank accounts in Hong Kong before the funds were transferred back to newly opened bank accounts at the original Swiss bank in the name of a Singapore- based asset-management firm, the release added.
The defendants face a maximum penalty of five years in prison each while the Allied Finance Trust company faces monetary penalties, according to the release. (ANI/Sputnik)
