Wegelin & Co., the 270-year-old Swiss bank charged with
helping U.S. taxpayers hide more than $1.2 billion from the Internal Revenue
Service, was ordered by a U.S. judge to forfeit $16 million Bloomberg writes. U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain in
Manhattan yesterday entered a default judgment against Wegelin, allowing the
government to take the money in Wegelin’s correspondent account in the U.S.,
held at UBS AG in Stamford, Connecticut.
Wegelin, based in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and three bankers
at its Zurich branch were indicted in February on charges of conspiring with
clients to evade U.S. taxes. Prosecutors called Wegelin a “fugitive” after the
bank declined to send a lawyer or other representative to a court hearing in
the case. Prosecutors claimed that
Wegelin and at least two other Swiss banks used the UBS account to launder
money deposited by U.S. taxpayers to help them avoid detection by the
government. Wegelin didn’t take any action to challenge the government’s claim
to the money….
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