"Raoul Weil, the former head of UBS AG (UBSN)'s global wealth management business, was granted $10.5 million bail after appearing in a U.S. courtroom for the first time to face charges that he helped Americans evade taxes.
Weil, 54, didn't enter a plea today in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he was indicted in October 2008 and declared a fugitive. He is set to be arraigned Jan. 7, when he will plead not guilty, according to his lawyer, Aaron Marcu. U.S. Magistrate Judge Patrick Hunt let Weil post a $9 million personal surety bond with a cash deposit of $4 million, a $1 million corporate bond and a $500,000 personal bond.
"We are pleased that the court agreed that Mr. Weil should be released on bail," Marcu, of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP in New York, said in an e-mail. "We are not engaged in negotiations with the government at this time. We look forward to sitting down to work with him on preparing his defense."
Weil is the highest-ranking banker among about 100 people charged since 2008 by the U.S. in a crackdown on offshore tax evasion. About three dozen foreign bankers, lawyers and advisers were charged. Weil will probably plead guilty, cooperate with prosecutors, and seek leniency at sentencing, tax lawyers not involved in his case said in interviews.
Source: Broward County Sheriff's Office via Bloomberg Raoul Weil, the former head of UBS AG's global wealth management business, is the... Read More
'Dead Bodies'
"There's a good chance he'll be ready to cooperate, and he'll be throwing his people under the bus," said attorney Edward Robbins of Hochman, Salkin, Rettig, Toscher & Perez, who was chief of the tax division for a decade at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. "He knows where all the dead bodies are. To the extent that the government missed any, he can tell them."
Weil, who lived and worked in Switzerland, was arrested Oct. 19 after checking into a hotel in Bologna, Italy. He was extradited to the U.S., and arrived Dec. 12 at the Broward County Jail, according to the county sheriff's website.
He is accused in the indictment of running a cross-border business that used secret Swiss accounts to conceal $20 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service.
Marcu told the judge today that while prosecutors say Weil sat at the apex of a criminal organization that managed $20 billion, he actually sat atop a $4 trillion business and oversaw thousands of employees worldwide. Weil was unaware of what a small group of advisers did with U.S. clients, Marcu told Hunt."
rest http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-16/ex-ubs-banker-weil-gets-9-million-bail-in-tax-dodge-case.html
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