UBS: UM GRANDE BANCO SUIÇO (E MUNDIAL)

Na revista The Economist de 3 de Julho é divulgada a informação de que o banco UBS (com mais de 80.000 colaboradores) poderá estar envolvido na construção de esquemas de fraude e evasão fiscal, relativamente aos seus clientes americanos com elevados recursos financeiros, estando a decorrer uma investigação do The Department of Justice (DoJ) e da Securities and Exchange Commission.

Transcrevem-se os seguintes parágrafos da notícia:

"America, the OECD and the European Union are always ready to attack the Swiss private banking model, with its notorious secrecy, as an unsporting competitor. Now UBS has given the American authorities an opportunity to demand details about banking clients. The Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are getting unprecedented co-operation from their Swiss counterparts, with the nice distinction that the Swiss will help in cases of tax fraud but not tax evasion. (Tax evasion is not a criminal offence in Switzerland.) Forgery of documents places the Birkenfeld file in the tray marked “fraud”.

The DoJ is investigating whether UBS helped American clients avoid taxes. This week a judge ruled that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could require UBS to identify American taxpayers with accounts not declared to the taxman. The SEC is looking into a separate question: whether UBS’s sale of American securities to American clients obliged it to register as a broker-dealer. Martin Liechti, a senior UBS banker, has been detained in Florida since April. Moreover, other UBS bankers from the Swiss-based unit which had been selling securities to American clients are no longer travelling to the United States. Other Swiss banks are also said to have stopped transatlantic trips."

Tendo em conta as notícias divulgadas na comunicação social portuguesa, este caso, a confirmar-se, poderá ter pontos de contacto com a chamada "Operação Furacão".

Será então interessante acompanhar os desenvolvimentos da "Operação UBS" e da "Operação Furacão", designadamente ao nível das sanções que porventura serão aplicadas, por forma a confirmar se as semelhanças a priori também existirão a posteriori.