52,000 Swiss banking clients guilty of US tax-evasion

Of course, true to form the banking stooges at the New York Times bury this news as a sidenote in a report that carries the unassuming title: Head of UBS Investment Bank Unit Steps Down. They play it down as the fourth such resignation in the last 18 months.

But, the circumstances surrounding his resignation are anything but common. ...This is BIG.

Americans may finally have a chance to make a substantial number of our country's so-called "elite" pay for their multiple crimes -- for a change -- without having to overthrow the government and chop off their heads.

The Swiss bank UBS, which has written off more than $50 billion since the start of the credit crisis, said Monday that the head of its investment banking unit,Jerker Johansson, is stepping down -- marking the fourth time that business has changed bosses in the last 18 months.
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Mr. Johansson is leaving immediately. ... Dominik von Arx, a UBS spokesman in London, declined to comment on the reasons for Mr. Johansson’s departure.

Mr. Grübel, formerly chief executive at Credit Suisse, has announced about 7,500 job cuts since taking over and sold the bank’s Brazilian financial services business for
about $2.5 billion. He is trying to strengthen the bank’s balance sheet and conclude a tax-evasion case involving 52,000 of UBS’s wealthy American clients.

On Saturday, the Swiss president, Hans-Rudolf Merz, asked Timothy F. Geithner, the U.S. Treasury secretary, to drop a lawsuit led by the Justice Department seeking to force UBS to turn over the clients’ names.

Under Swiss bank secrecy laws, disclosing clients’ names is a criminal offense that can carry prison terms and large fines.

All this time we've been waging a so-called "war on terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan for allegedly harboring a handful of so-called terrorists, when really we should have launched war against Switzerland for aiding and abetting tens of thousands of wanted criminals, whose crimes over decades have facilitated the destruction of America's economy.

Switzerland instead is proposing to negotiate a new tax treaty with the United States that would make possible such disclosures in the future. However, the treaty would not apply to the clients in the continuing case. The current treaty, signed in 1996, does not require Switzerland to disclose clients’ names, and the United States is eager for a new treaty that does. Formal talks on a new treaty are scheduled to start on Tuesday in Bern, Switzerland.

For its part, the Justice Department is unlikely to scale back or drop its case against UBS, according to a senior person briefed on the matter. The agency “is not going to give in,” this person said on Sunday.

It better not -- or they'll have to answer to a mob of angry Americans.

Daniel Haener, the acting consul general of Switzerland in New York, said Sunday that President Merz had asked Mr. Geithner for the names case against UBS to be withdrawn after a new agreement is signed. Mr. Haener said that “according to Mr. Merz, Mr. Geithner took note but was not yet in a measure to answer.”

The Treasury Department, in a statement on Sunday, said that Mr. Geithner “listened to the Swiss concerns regarding the UBS case and indicated that he understood the importance of appropriately resolving the matter.”

That asshole better think long and hard before he does the Swiss any "favors" at the American taxpayer's expense.

Swiss officials have said in recent weeks that any new treaty might fall apart unless the legal case against UBS is dropped, because upset Swiss citizens could force a national referendum on the matter and reject it. The Swiss Parliament could also reject it, the official said.

Who gives a shit what the Swiss do?!!

If the Swiss government refuses to do it, Americans have a right to prosecute their own goddamn criminals!

The legal fight for the identities of clients has created a popular uproar in Switzerland, where financial secrecy is a revered tradition.

Not at our expense.

UBS has argued that its employees could be prosecuted under Swiss law if they were forced to disclose client information.

Again, who gives a shit? Every nation must do what it sees fits with its nationals.

The Justice Department has been trying to force UBS to disclose the names since the bank in February reached a $780 million deferred-prosecution agreement and admitted to defrauding the Internal Revenue Service through offshore private banking services sold to wealthy Americans.

The bank has turned over 300 names as part of the deal, according to court papers in the case.

I wonder who those poor schmucks are...perhaps Kellerman was one of them.

No matter.

This thing is HUGE - every blue blooded American must learn of this scandal and turn up the heat on their respective congressmen and women.

Bloggers of America - we've gotta make sure this thing doesn't simply "go away."

We must turn up the heat on our government to reign in the legion of criminals being aided and abetted by UBS.

And the if the Swiss try to stop us, then war is what they'll get.