Task Force Blog

Blog

US and Swiss Initial a Settlement in UBS Case

August 12, 2009

By Clark Gascoigne

Clark Gascoigne is the Communications Director at Global Financial Integrity in Washington, DC.

It’s just been reported that US and Swiss governmnet authorities have initialed a settlement that would bring about an end to the UBS legal saga.  According to the Washington Post:

In a conference call Wednesday morning with the federal judge presiding over the case, Justice Department lawyer Stuart D. Gibson said the parties had initialed agreements and that they would ask the judge to dismiss the matter when the final documents are signed.

Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed, leaving unclear what each side gained or conceded.

So we still don’t know what the settlement entails, however rumors floating about last week suggested that the settlement would not require UBS to pay a fine and would only require the bank to release information on about 5,000 accounts – roughly 1/10 of the 52,000 names that the US had requested.

However, since then the settlement negotiations were delayed again, and the Swiss government held an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the case, so it’s possible that what looked like the likely settlement early last week, may not be the settlement that was initialed this morning.

Disclaimer: Unless specifically stated to be the views of the Task Force, the opinions expressed on this blog are solely the opinions of the individual blogger and are not necessarily those of the Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development.

Latest Press Releases

South Africa Joins the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development

Task Force · February 10, 2012

WASHINGTON DC – South Africa announced today that it has joined the Partnership Panel of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and ...

Global Witness: Commitments to improved transparency in the forest sector must be acted on

Global Witness · February 9, 2012

LONDON - Forest dependent communities are still in the dark about how their forests are being managed, despite additional commitments from governments ...

U.S. Senate Bill Introduced to Crack Down on Offshore Tax Abuse

Global Financial Integrity · February 7, 2012

WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) today applauded the introduction of a bill, which would close several major tax loopholes and ...