A cheap price and a great return on investment for them.
Eh, the fine they’re paying is over double the amount of taxes saved (~$50 million dollars) and the settlement says they have to cooperate with investigations on those accounts, so looks like the justice department is going after the account holders in addition to the bank. Might be a rare instance where it didn’t pay in the end for them to help tax evaders.
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A private Swiss bank will pay $122.9 million in back taxes and penalties after admitting it helped clients hide assets from the IRS between 2008 and 2014.
According to court filings and the Justice Department, Banque Pictet & Cie, Co helped a group of U.S. taxpayers hide $5.6 billion in order to conceal income, which saved them $50.6 million in taxes over those years.
"Banque Pictet et Cie admitted to actively helping U.S. taxpayers use coded accounts, foreign trusts and entities, nominee beneficiaries and other deceits to conceal their income and assets abroad,” acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg said in a Justice Department press release.
The money was held in 1,637 Swiss bank accounts by Banque Pictet, a wealth and asset management firm that is part of the Pictet Group, a financial services company that said it had $691 billion in assets as of June 30.
The firm entered into a deferred prosecution agreement that requires it to cooperate with government investigations.
That could include civil or criminal inquiries into the people whose assets the bank hid.
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Great adverisment. Do they still offer this service to US customers?
