MIAMI — A senior executive with Swiss banking giant UBS AG was charged in a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday with conspiring to hide $20 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service using secret overseas accounts for thousands of customers.
Raoul Weil, chief executive of a UBS division handling cross-border business and private banking, is charged with one count of conspiring to defraud the U.S. through income-tax evasion.
The indictment also says other UBS executives at high levels of the company took part in the conspiracy.
“Every American who pays his or her taxes should be offended that a select few use anonymous offshore accounts to avoid paying their fair share,” said U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta of Miami.
Weil’s lawyer said he is innocent.
The indictment charges that from 2002 to 2007, Weil, as chief of UBS’s wealth-management business, helped about 20,000 U.S. clients conceal assets in offshore accounts. About 17,000 of the customers hid their identities and their Swiss bank accounts from the IRS, and many of them filed false income-tax returns.
At the same time, the cross- border business earned about $200 million for UBS from 2002 to 2007, according to U.S. authorities.
Prosecutors said Weil referred to the business as “toxic waste” because it put UBS at odds with U.S. tax law.
