UBS Faces German Case Seeking $93 Million Fine in Tax Probe
(Bloomberg) -- German prosecutors are seeking a fine of 83 million euros ($93 million) against UBS Group AG for helping customers evade tax.
Managers at UBS helped "numerous" clients evade taxes, partly by making cross-border bank transfers appear as though they were within Germany, according to a prosecutor's statement Tuesday. The allegation covers action between 2001 and 2012. The request for the fine was filed in a local court in the German city of Mannheim, prosecutors said.
The case has been pending since 2012 and a year later prosecutors said they raided offices and homes of bank employees and were investigating four of them. In Tuesday's release, they said it was enough to fine the bank in order to sanction wrongdoing by the bank executives.
Evidence strongly suggests that the lender's German unit was "fully integrated in a respective business model" of the Swiss-based UBS which "supported its action seeking to circumvent taxes in Germany," prosecutors said.
UBS said it would fight the prosecutors' allegations.
“We do not believe the prosecutor's claim is supported by the facts or the law and we intend to vigorously defend this administrative proceeding,” a bank spokesman said.
--With assistance from Patrick Winters.
To contact the reporter on this story: Karin Matussek in Berlin at kmatussek@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Christopher Elser, Peter Chapman
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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