UBS to Hand Over Names of 4,450 Clients

UBS will hand over the names of 4,450 of its American account holders as part of a tax evasion settlement, the Wall Street Journal reports, and another 5,000 names will be produced under a special IRS amnesty program. UBS won’t pay a monetary fine. Those being turned over may have a chance to fight the disclosure in Swiss court. The compromise gets around potential Swiss objections to the disclosures.

“We short-circuited a protracted litigation process by culling the accounts to the 4,450 that were of the greatest interest to us,” said the IRS commissioner. UBS pleaded guilty in February to participating “in a scheme to defraud the US,” and since then, four clients have pleaded guilty to tax evasion. And more are to come, according to one legal expert. “UBS is the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The facts were just so egregiously against UBS.” (More UBS stories.)