he snitched on bunch of rich people.
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he snitched on bunch of rich people. -
Tax snitch could hit jail jackpot
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
An ex-employee of Swiss banking giant UBS may leave prison a rich man after he blew the whistle on a huge tax fraud in the United States.
Bradley Birkenfeld turned in thousands of people for trying to evade taxes in the United States, but was sentenced to three years and four months in prison in August for inciting UBS clients to commit tax fraud.
His term is to begin on Friday.
Birkenfeld feels he has been badly treated after he denounced 19,000 UBS clients who were said to have invested 20 billion Swiss francs (HK$150 billion) in secret Swiss accounts.
"I'm the only one going to prison. Out of 19,000 accounts and no Swiss bankers," he told US television network CBS. "I gave them the biggest tax fraud case in the world. I exposed 19,000 international criminals. And I'm going to jail?"
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But Birkenfeld could yet have the last laugh as under federal laws he may be entitled to up to 30 percent of any taxes recovered by the US tax service, one of his lawyers told CBS.
Prosecutors say the Internal Revenue Service could recoup several billion dollars in lost taxes.
Birkenfeld, from Massachusetts, was sentenced just two days after UBS and the US and Swiss governments reached a landmark out-of-court settlement in the US civil tax fraud complaint.
Despite strict Swiss secrecy laws, UBS agreed to hand over 4,500 names of Americans suspected of tax evasion to the US authorities.
However, Birkenfeld was sentenced for aiding the Californian property developer Igor Olinicoff to hide some US$200 million of shares in Switzerland and Lichtenstein.
His lawyer, Steven Kohn, said the US authorities should be thanking him.
"Mr Birkenfeld has saved the taxpayers billions of dollars, brought thousands of people to justice. They should blow up his check," Kohn said.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSEComment