Reuters | Financial Times | June 19 2017:
Agents pursue ‘leavers’ who moved Swiss bank accounts to other offshore centres.
US tax authorities are intensifying their efforts to find tax evaders and the bankers who assist them, deploying agents to examine reams of data collected from the Panama Papers, Swiss banks, and whistleblowers.
The Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service are tracing accounts shifted by Americans from Switzerland to other countries such as Israel, Singapore and Hong Kong.
“I think there are areas of offshore tax evasion that still have to be pursued,’’ Don Fort, deputy director of the IRS’s criminal investigations division, told the Financial Times. “The key is trying to tie that information together and follow the money and see where it leads.’’
US authorities were pursuing so-called leavers, or citizens who moved their accounts to other offshore locales after the Swiss banks came under investigation, said lawyers involved in the matter.
“I think what they’re doing is they’re trying to triage and find the most egregious instances of non-compliance to prosecute and the rest of them are being sent out for civil audits,” said Bryan Skarlatos, a New York tax attorney.
To read full article – please click here.
