Now this will certainly upset a few cocktail hours at Davos.....

The United States indicted Wegelin, the oldest Swiss private bank, on charges that it enabled wealthy Americans to evade taxes on at least $1.2 billion hidden in offshore bank accounts, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday.

The announcement, by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, represents the first time an overseas bank has been indicted by the United States for enabling tax fraud by U.S. taxpayers.

The indictment said the U.S. government had seized more than $16 million from Wegelin's correspondent bank, the Swiss giant UBS AG, in Stamford, Connecticut, via a separate civil forfeiture complaint. Because Wegelin has no branches outside Switzerland, it used correspondent banking services, a standard industry practice, to handle money for U.S.-based clients.

UBS could not be reached for immediate comment.

The charges against Wegelin, of fraud and conspiracy, provide a rare glimpse into the world of Swiss private banking in the wake of a crackdown on UBS AG. In 2009, UBS paid $780 million and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department over charges it engaged in fraud and conspiracy by enabling scores of Americans to evade taxes through its private bank. The bank later turned over the names of more than 4,500 clients, a watershed in Swiss bank secrecy, which protects the confidentiality of clients and their data.

The indictment signals a ramping up of pressure on 10 other Swiss banks under investigation by the Justice Department, including Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and Basler Kantonalbank.

Most Americans can rightfully complain, “I pay more federal income taxes than General Electric, Boeing, DuPont, Wells Fargo, Verizon., all put together.”

That’s an unacceptable situation.

The following companies paid little or no taxes from 2008-2010 and fired 93,000 Americans!!! But could afford to spend $500 million on Lobbying...

The biggest companies in the United States have been firing workers and in some cases lobbying for rules that depress wages at the very time that jobs are needed, pay is low, and the federal budget suffers from a lack of revenue.

The top ten are:  GE, PG&E, Verizon, Boeing, FEDEX, AEP, Honywell, Duke Energy, DuPont, Wells Fargo.

Last month Citizens for Tax Justice and an affiliate issued “Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers 2008-10″. It showed that 30 brand-name companies paid a federal income tax rate of minus 6.7 percent on $160 billion of profit from 2008 through 2010 compared to a going corporate tax rate of 35 percent. All but one of those 30 companies reported lobbying expenses in Washington.


Another report, by Public Campaign, shows that 29 of those companies spent nearly half a billion dollars over those three years lobbying in Washington for laws and rules that favor their interests.