Ex-UBS banker and Swiss lawyer face tax charges

The US yesterday indicted a former senior UBS banker and a Swiss lawyer for allegedly helping wealthy US citizens hide their assets in secret accounts, as Washington broadened its crackdown on offshore tax evasion.

The charges come a day after the US signed a historic deal with Switzerland giving it access to the names of 4,450 US clients holding offshore accounts at UBS, the country's biggest bank, and signalled its intent to pursue tax evaders as well as anyone who might be helping them.

Yesterday's indictment alleges Hansruedi Schumacher, a former UBS banker who ran the bank's offshore business in the US, helped clients set up sham companies and use other deceptive methods to fool US authorities. Matthias Rickenbach, a Swiss lawyer, was also charged with providing legal advice for the scheme.

In one case, the two allegedly convinced a client to transfer her mother's assets to an account in the name of Mr Schumacher's father. Upon the father's death, the money could be repatriated to the US as inheritance from a foreign citizen to the client's children, nieces and nephews, the indictment claimed.

The two also allegedly helped clients obtain offshore credit cards; falsified bank documents to make it look as if their US clients' assets belonged to Swiss citizens and hand-delivered cash to their clients when they travelled to the US.

The indictment also alleged clients were encouraged to transfer assets from UBS to Neue Zuercher Bank, a smaller Swiss bank - where Mr Schumacher later worked - because the latter would come under less US scrutiny.

NZB, Mr Schumacher and Mr Rickenbach could not be immediately reached for comment yesterday.

More than 150 criminal cases involving UBS clients are under way in the US but that number is set to jump.