U.S. and Swiss at impasse over IRS accord!
NEW YORK/GENEVA - June 28, 2011 - Advanced talks have bogged down on a multibillion-dollar deal between Switzerland and the United States over Swiss banks helping Amerikans to shield their money from the U.S. taxman, two sources briefed on the matter said Tuesday.
The sticking point centers on a renewed Swiss insistence that any deal leave Swiss bankers and executives employed by the banks and other financial institutions free from prosecution in the United States, the sources said.
A spokesman for the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters in Switzerland said the talks were still ongoing but declined to give further details.
Under the civil agreement being negotiated, known as a global resolution, the United States would require the banks to pay a fine, exit their undeclared offshore banking businesses for Amerikans, and turn over client names to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and U.S. Department of Justice, according to the sources.
In exchange, the agencies would drop their widening criminal investigation into the banks, which include HSBC, Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and Basler Kantonalbank.
But U.S. federal prosecutors still want the right to prosecute Swiss bankers and executives down the road if their scrutiny yields new information, these sources said.
That is in part because the proposed global resolution will not cover banks against which the DoJ has strong evidence of criminal fraud in helping U.S. clients evade taxes, according to a senior U.S. government official.
"If we have a criminal case, do you really think we're going to drop it?" said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
