Swiss Banker Pleads Guilty to Conspiring with U.S. Tax Evaders

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Andreas Bachmann, a Swiss national and top banking and investment adviser has pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service for his U.S. customers. Bachmann was charged on July 2011 in a one-count superseding indictment and ultimately pleaded guilty as announced this week by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

In the statement of facts filed with his plea agreement, Bachmann admitted that while working as a relationship manager in Switzerland for a subsidiary of an international bank, he had conspired to help U.S. customers in evading their income taxes by concealing assets and income in secret Swiss bank accounts.

  

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Bachmann also helped his clients to do cash transactions, and he would receive deposits in cash from customers and would pay others who wanted to withdraw cash from the money he held with him. He traveled to the United States twice each year with his superiors including the head of the subsidiary’s private bank in Zurich and the chief executive officer of the subsidiary, fully aware of his plans and objectives.

According to the statement of facts, the CEO of the subsidiary that employed Bachmann was aware that he was violating U.S. law and he told him, “Mr. Bachmann, you know what we expect of you, don’t get caught.”

Bachmann admitted that he understood that a number of his U.S. customers concealed their ownership and control of foreign financial accounts by holding those accounts in the names of nominee tax haven entities, or structures, which were created for the purpose. Such structures for hiding money in offshore accounts were previously handled by one Josef Dorig, but later the international bank instructed Dorig to form his own company for managing nominee tax haven entities. The bank then directed its subsidiaries to do business with Dorig. Bachmann dealt with Dorig Partner AG for a major part of his transactions.

The investigation in the case is ongoing and being handled by the IRS-Criminal Investigation.