Swiss bank helping clients evade US taxes

Credit Suisse, the second-largest Swiss bank, has helped thousands of wealthy Americans avoid paying taxes by hiding billions of dollars of their assets from US tax authorities, a Senate investigation has found.

Credit Suisse held as much as $12 billion in assets for 22,000 American clients, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The US government has received only 238 names of US citizens with secret accounts at Credit Suisse, or just 1 percent of the estimated total, the investigation concluded.

The Zurich based firm “aided and abetted US tax evasion, not only from behind a veil of secrecy in Switzerland, but also on US soil by sending Swiss bankers here to open hidden accounts,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, the subcommittee’s chairman, said at a news conference.

Credit Suisse CEO Brady Dougan, told a Senate hearing Wednesday that his bank “regrets very deeply” that it aided billions of dollars of tax evasion by American clients.

There are currently 14 Swiss financial institutions that are under investigation by the US Justice Department for assisting in tax evasion.

Switzerland, famous for its bank secrecy laws, protects the privacy of bank clients, similar to confidentiality protections between doctors and patients or lawyers and their clients.

Five years ago, UBS, the largest Swiss bank, admitted to helping American account holders avoid taxes and agreed to pay a fine of $780 million to the US government.

Corporations and rich individuals in the United States have for years lobbied Congress for loopholes that allow them to keep much of their profits out of Internal Revenue Service’s reach.

Tax activists argue that the government is missing out on billions of dollars because companies and people are stashing profits abroad to avoid taxes.