Tax Evasion

NEWARK - Eight offshore banks are under federal grand jury investigation for facilitating tax evasion by US citizens as part of an investigation the Justice Department said has dealt "fabled Swiss bank secrecy a devastating blow. " The department disclosed the investigations on a section of its website detailing the Tax Division's Offshore Compliance Initiative. In 2009, prosecutors charged UBS, the largest Swiss bank, with aiding tax evasion by US clients. UBS avoided prosecution by paying $780 million, admitting it fostered tax evasion, and giving the Internal Revenue Service data on more...

Spain's National Court said Tuesday it had dropped its investigation into the country's top banker — Banco Santander chairman Emilio Botin — and 11 of his relatives over possible income and wealth tax evasion. The case focused on tax returns filed between 2005 and 2009 on accounts the family held in Switzerland's HSBC Private Bank (Suisse). The court said the probe showed the Botin family had normalized its tax situation before the investigation was opened last year.

BEIJING — A company China says is controlled by artist Ai Weiwei was accused yesterday of massive tax evasion in the government’s clearest disclosure yet about its investigation of the activist detained more than six weeks. The investigation also found Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd. had intentionally destroyed accounting documents, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing unidentified police investigators. The brief report gave no other details and did not quantify the “huge amount’’ of tax the company is accused of not paying.

A former civilian naval engineer from Virginia pleaded not guilty in Rhode Island on Tuesday to charges stemming from what prosecutors say was a bribery and fraud scheme that cost the U.S. Navy about $10 million over 15 years. Ralph M. Mariano, 54, of South Arlington, Va., and his 80-year-old father, Ralph Mariano Jr., of North Providence, were indicted after three others accused in the plot pleaded guilty to charges and agreed to cooperate with federal authorities. Prosecutors allege Ralph M. Mariano, a former naval civilian engineer, used his authority at the Naval Undersea...

A Norwegian prosecutor has charged Houston-based offshore drilling company Transocean with evading taxes worth $1.8 billion. The charges announced Wednesday against Transocean Inc. and Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling Inc. are related to the sale of 12 oil rigs 10 years ago by their Norwegian subsidiary Transocean ASA. The prosecutor says the companies operate from Houston but are registered in the Cayman Islands and Delaware....

A restaurant owner faces sentencing for tax evasion stemming from his failure to report nearly $1.4 million in income over seven years. Luciano G. Mase of Westbrook is scheduled to be sentenced Friday in federal court in New Haven. Authorities say the 56-year-old Mase pleaded guilty last December to tax evasion. Mase owns Moreland Corp., which does business as The Bulkeley House Restaurant in New London. Federal prosecutors say Mase admitted that for the 2003 through 2009 tax years he filed false returns that substantially underreported the business's gross receipts.

Russian prosecutors have charged a fugitive business partner of jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky with tax evasion. Alexei Spirichev headed two companies affiliated with Khodorkovsky's Yukos conglomerate. He fled Russia after Khodorkovsky's 2003 arrest and now lives in London. Russia's General Prosecutor's office said Tuesday that Spirichev's companies were "fictitious" and earned more than $300 million by abusing tax privileges and receiving illegal tax returns between 1998 and 2001.

Sentencing will take place April 20 for two Dracut brothers convicted of tax evasion last week by a federal jury. Paul Brown and Raymond Brown, both 45, are the former owners of J.P. Brown & Sons, an excavation business they ran from 1996 to 2006. Over a four-year period, the brothers did not pay taxes on $2 million worth of earnings, according to the Internal Revenue Service. Each was charged with one count of conspiracy to impair, impede, and obstruct the IRS's efforts to collect income taxes, and one count of tax evasion.

Switzerland's president has criticized the United States' demands on her country on suspected U.S. tax cheats. Micheline Calmy-Rey told a meeting of Swiss diplomats Monday that the procedures demanded by Washington were either "too tedious, or legally impermissible, or politically unjustifiable. " U.S. authorities are investigating several Swiss banks for allegedly helping Americans hide money from the Internal Revenue System. Calmy-Rey says an existing tax treaty and procedures agreed after Swiss bank UBS was found to have aided thousands of tax cheats were sufficient.

BEIJING - A prominent Chinese legal scholar whose rights group has tackled some of China’s most politically sensitive cases, including a tainted milk scandal, has been accused of tax evasion following his arrest a week ago, his brother said yesterday. The detention of Xu Zhiyong comes as China appears to be widening a crackdown against activist lawyers and nongovernmental organizations to stifle any dissent ahead of the 60th anniversary of the communist nation’s founding on Oct. 1. Last month, more than 50 Beijing lawyers, many of whom focus on politically sensitive human rights...

Italian Premier Mario Monti pledged on Monday to make (EURO)4.2 billion ($5.5 billion) in cuts in state spending over the next six months in a bid to avoid raising sales taxes and tapped a leading private-sector turnaround expert for the job of determining just what gets slashed. Monti told journalists after a five-hour-long Cabinet meeting on the nation's financial crisis that he hopes to avoid hiking the national sales tax from 21 to 23 percent in October by eliminating wasteful spending, implementing better purchasing policies, and possibly putting unused government properties up for...

A civilian engineer from Virginia who worked for the Naval Sea Systems Command and his 80-year-old father have been indicted in an alleged bribery and fraud scheme that prosecutors say cost the US Navy $10 million over 15 years. Prosecutors said Thursday that 54-year-old Ralph Mariano of South Arlington, Va., took kickbacks in exchange for assisting with naval contracts held by Advanced Solutions for Tomorrow, a firm with offices in Rhode Island and Georgia. His father, Ralph Mariano Jr. of North Providence, R.I., faces tax evasion charges.

►Today is Sunday, April 15, the 106th day of 2012. There are 260 days left in the year. ►Today's birthdays: Actor Michael Ansara is 90. Country singer Roy Clark is 79. Author Jeffrey Archer is 72. Rock singer-guitarist Dave Edmunds is 68. Actor Michael Tucci is 66. Actress Lois Chiles is 65. Writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason is 65. Actress Amy Wright is 62. Columnist Heloise is 61. Actress Emma Thompson is 53. Bluegrass musician Jeff...

Getting an extra two days to file tax returns beyond the usual April 15 deadline isn't likely to cure procrastination. More than 30 percent of taxpayers filed the week before Tax Day or later via extensions in 2011, and Internal Revenue Service statistics show the pace is similar this year. Procrastinating may come at a price. "The amount of work that's going to need to be done at the last minute is no less just because you've waited, and the potential for errors is greater," says Suzanne Shier, at Northern Trust Bank.

In a setback for efforts to end a tax dispute between the United States and Switzerland, a Swiss court said Wednesday that Credit Suisse could not turn over account data of its American clients to US tax authorities because doing so would violate the terms of a 1996 tax treaty between the two countries. In its decision, dated April 5 and published Wednesday, the Federal Administrative Court in Bern upheld the appeal of a bank client who had objected to having his account data given to the Internal Revenue Service.

Russian prosecutors have charged a fugitive business partner of jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky with tax evasion. Alexei Spirichev headed two companies affiliated with Khodorkovsky's Yukos conglomerate. He fled Russia after Khodorkovsky's 2003 arrest and now lives in London. Russia's General Prosecutor's office said Tuesday that Spirichev's companies were "fictitious" and earned more than $300 million by abusing tax privileges and receiving illegal tax returns between 1998 and 2001.

ROME - In this nation where tax evasion can be considered part of a solid business plan, even dentists and hairdressers demand payment in cash - payments that then frequently vanish from accounting books like so many Cheshire cats. But as the world's eighth-largest economy struggles to pull back from the brink of a debt crisis that has much of the financial world on edge, Italy may be on the verge of a national reckoning over one its most vexing financial and cultural problems: tax cheats.

The German government said Monday that a Swiss decision to issue arrest warrants for three German tax inspectors hasn't damaged relations between the two countries, and insisted it illustrates the need to get a stalled deal on tax evasion approved. Germany's center-left opposition condemned the Swiss move when word of it emerged over the weekend. It is part of an investigation into German authorities' 2010 purchase of a compact disc containing data on suspected tax cheats. But the government noted that the two countries have different laws regarding tax evasion and bank secrecy.

A German newspaper is reporting that Swiss authorities have issued arrest warrants for three German tax inspectors over the purchase in 2010 of a CD containing data on suspected tax cheats. The Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported Saturday that the Swiss accused the officials of "economic espionage" in a letter to authorities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It quoted state governor Hannelore Kraft as saying that the move was "monstrous. " Kraft added: "The tax inspectors were only doing their duty to chase German tax cheats.