222 North American Billionaires hide their money in Swiss Banks.

[Ichingcarpenter]

Very interesting articles on how the rich avoid paying their fair share.






Telling Swiss secrets: 222 billionaires
Part 2: Feeding the UBS obsession with North American wealth.

snip


Birkenfeld and his fellow crossborder bankers in UBS’ global wealth management division sought to sign on anyone with the obligation, if not necessarily the inclination, to pay U.S. taxes. “People understood what the advantages were,” he said, coyly enough, of the secrecy they sold.

After early stints at Credit Suisse and Barclays Geneva office, Birkenfeld joined UBS in 2001. By then, he had experience enough to know his division was steeped in skirting the law, if not in Switzerland itself, then certainly in the U.S. “Swiss bank secrecy is analogous with criminal conspiracy. That’s how I see it,” he told me.


Numbered bank accounts are illegal in the United States and most other banking jurisdictions, but it’s okay for U.S. residents to hold numbered accounts in the few countries that allow them — Switzerland is the biggest — provided they, and the banks, declare income-generating accounts to the IRS and the account holder pays tax on the income.


Part One:http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/europe/100724/swiss-banking-secrecy-billionaires

Part 2;http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/europe/100724/swiss-banking-secrecy


Its in 4 parts but I need to go to work.