ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The US Department of Justice (DOJ) 21 July extended an earlier indictment of four Credit Suisse former and present bankers to eight, for helping wealthy Americans evade US taxes. In a lengthy statement the DOJ notes that:
“Markus Walder, former head of North America Offshore Banking at an international bank headquartered in Zurich; Susanne D. Rueegg Meier, a former manager with the international bank; Andreas Bachmann, a former banker at a subsidiary of the international bank; and Josef Dörig, the founder of a Swiss trust company, have been charged with conspiring with other Swiss bankers to defraud the United States, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced today. The four are charged in a superseding indictment together with four other defendants (Marco Parenti Adami, Emanuel Agustino, Michele Bergantino and Roger Schaerer) who were charged in an indictment returned on Feb. 23, 2011.”
The DOJ’s “superseding indictment” claims that “As of the fall of 2008, the international bank maintained thousands of secret accounts for U.S. customers with as much as $3 billion in total assets under management in those accounts. The conspiracy dates back to 1953 and involved two generations of US tax evaders including US customers who inherited secret accounts at the international bank.”
The list of charges is lengthy and a report last weekend by Tages Anzeiger that negotiations had broken down between Switzerland and the US over the DOJ’s investigation into Credit Suisse affairs now appears to have credence.
The US statement ends with the tag line: “A criminal indictment is only an accusation and a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.”
Walder is the former head of North America offshore banking at Credit Suisse Group, and Rueegg Meier and Bachmann are former senior managers at the bank while Dörig, who trained at the bank, is a former board member of Arbitrium Financial Services in Zurich in addition to having created his own trust company, Dorig Partner AG.
