Credit Suisse Group AG is a Switzerland-based multinational financial services holding company headquartered in Zürich that operates the Credit Suisse Bank and other financial services investments. Credit Suisse is the largest of the 14 Swiss banks that are under criminal investigation for helping Americans cheat the IRS. Thousands of Credit Suisse Group’s U.S. clients still don’t know whether tax authorities will learn their identities, as according to Bloomberg News, U.S. senators faulted the Justice Department for securing names for only 238 of 22,000 Americans with Credit Suisse accounts, stating that the bank helped them hide as much as $10 billion from the Internal Revenue Service.
A former federal prosecutor, Jeffrey Neiman said, “These hearings are going to give some sort of momentum to the Justice Department,” reporting that “Criminal cases are all about momentum, where one event leads to another, which leads to culmination.”
According to Bloomberg News, after the hearing, Michigan Senator Carl Levin, told reporters, “If you’re serious about the future, and all of us want to talk about the future, you damn well better have accountability for the past.” In February 2009, UBS avoided prosecution by paying $780 million, admitting it administered tax evasion. Separately, in 2013, German authorities began to probe Credit Suisse, its private bank subsidiary Clariden Leu, and its German subsidiary Neue Aargauer for helping German citizens evade taxes. It has been reported that the bank eventually entered into a €150 million settlement with the government.
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