Hiding Money Takes a Village
Having a Swiss bank account is not so much fun these days. IRS got a firm grip on this matter, and that started when the Swiss bank giant UBS gave in.
The weakest link
UBS AG is one of the Switzerland’s largest bank. It provides financial services to the wealthy people around the world. Swiss banks have a very unique advantage over other banks. Switzerland has laws to protect client financial privacy and Swiss banks traditionally offer high level of confidentiality. However, in February 2009, the U.S. government was able to “persuade” UBS to start giving out identity information for accounts which U.S. citizens are the beneficial owners. So, the game is over.
Who are they?
With curiosity, I checked out some of those prosecuted cases, wondering what exactly they did to hide their secret accounts, and what kind of people they are, and how much money we are talking about.
Well, it turned out that they are not the Forbes-Richest-Lists kind of people. At least not found yet. The cases involved people like toy manufacturer sales rep, sales manager of Boeing, charted accountant worked for an international company, yacht broker, real estate developer, and business owner. Their assets in the Swiss accounts range from $1 million to $8 million. I am not sure if this is very impressive.
A detailed news story about one of such character
It takes a village
How do they operate? With helps from Swiss bankers, they set up fictitious corporations in Panama, British Virgin Island, or Hong Kong, and use these companies to open UBS accounts. They remain the beneficial owners behind the scene. How do they spend the money? They find bankers or financial service companies to set up sham loans to send money back to the U.S. or they spend money with credit cards that are linked with their secrete Swiss accounts.
Well, this is a well-oiled international network. Bottom-line, it takes a village too when it comes to hiding money! 
