Ubs, Offshore Tax Haven | featured news

The Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday disclosed the criteria being used by the Swiss banking giant UBS to select names of American clients that will be turned over to the agency as part of a settlement of a tax evasion case.

Swiss bank UBS AG warned U.S. customers by registered mail their account details may be given to U.S. tax authorities, a method that could itself breach secrecy laws, a Swiss paper said on Sunday.

Faced with a Thursday midnight deadline to avoid possible prosecution, more than 7,500 Americans have come clean about secret foreign bank accounts, a senior IRS official said in an interview for broadcast tonight on "ABC World News with Charles Gibson."

U.S. regulators will receive the names as part of an investigation of Americans avoiding taxes through the use of offshore accounts.

Reuters - Switzerland's UBS will not have to pay a fine as part of the settlement of a tax evasion dispute with the United States, two Swiss newspapers reported on Sunday.

U.S. has been seeking data on depositors suspected of using UBS bank accounts to hide cash from IRS.

The U.S. and Swiss governments and banking giant UBS AG indicated Sunday they were seeking a settlement and asked a federal judge ...

UBS AG Chief Executive Oswald Gruebel sent a memorandum to the bank's top executives on Thursday saying the bank could not comply with a U.S. government request to disclose the identity of 52,000 secret account holders, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.

Swiss bank UBS AG "systematically and deliberately" violated U.S. law by dispatching private bankers to recruit wealthy Americans interested in evading taxes and must be forced to reveal the identities of 52,000 of those clients, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday.