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Credit Suisse agreed to pay $511mn and plead guilty to helping American taxpayers hide more than $4bn from authorities under an agreement with the US Department of Justice, admitting it violated a deal struck a decade ago for similar reasons.
UBS, which acquired its rival as part of an emergency rescue in 2023, said on Monday that Credit Suisse Services would pay two fines totalling just over half a billion dollars.
That includes $372mn for helping to prepare false income tax returns and almost $139mn as part of a non-prosecution agreement regarding US taxpayers booked in its legacy Singapore booking centre.
“UBS was not involved in the underlying conduct and has zero tolerance for tax evasion,” the bank, which entered its own $780mn settlement with US prosecutors in 2009 over similar conduct, said in a statement. As the successor company to Credit Suisse, UBS executives signed the plea agreement with prosecutors filed in federal court in Virginia on Monday, and appeared in court on behalf of the company to enter the guilty plea.
The plea agreement brings to an end a years-long investigation by the DoJ, which said Credit Suisse helped Americans conceal assets and income from the Internal Revenue Service in at least 475 offshore accounts. The misconduct breached a 2014 plea agreement struck by the lender with US authorities, it added.
“Among other fraudulent acts, bankers at Credit Suisse falsified records, processed fictitious donation paperwork, and serviced more than $1 billion in accounts without documentation of tax compliance,” the DoJ said in a statement.
Credit Suisse in 2014 agreed to pay $2.6bn — then the highest payment in a DoJ criminal tax case — for helping US taxpayers file false returns.
The bank on Monday also entered into an agreement to avoid prosecution in relation to accounts it held in Singapore on behalf of US clients who were using them to evade taxes. The accounts’ total assets, which were maintained between 2014 and 2023, amounted to more than $2bn, the DoJ said.
UBS discovered what appeared to be undeclared US accounts in Singapore after merging with Credit Suisse — and later disclosed information about them with the DoJ, according to federal prosecutors.
Under the deals, which do not shield individuals, Credit Suisse Services and UBS must co-operate with the DoJ’s ongoing probes.
The settlement comes after the US Senate Committee in 2023 found that Credit Suisse had been complicit in helping ultra-wealthy Americans avoid tax, and that it had failed to report nearly $100mn in secret offshore accounts belonging to a single family of US taxpayers.
The investigation was triggered after former Credit Suisse employees, who had originally reported the bank’s illegal activities, said the tax evasion continued “well after the plea agreement and sentencing”.
