The heir to the Nina Ricci perfume dynasty has been sentenced to three years in prison, two of them suspended, after being convicted on Monday of hiding money from the French taxman with the help of HSBC. A Paris court also fined Arlette Ricci €1m (£722,000) after declaring she had shown a “particularly determined willingness […]

The question of tax investigations is a highly topical one, given the shift of tone and language on the part of the international political community concerning this issue. The distinction between tax avoidance, which is lawful, and tax evasion, which is unlawful and criminal, is apparently being quickly forgotten. Individuals and institutions need to take […]

Government threatens to disclose identities in official gazette after Switzerland pledges to help tax officials in India HSBC’s Indian customers have been advised to get a lawyer in Switzerland or have their names published in the official gazette over tax evasion claims. HSBC customers in India suspected of tax evasion have been given 30 days […]

The Department of Justice announced today that BSI SA, one of the 10 largest private banks in Switzerland, is the first bank to reach a resolution under the Department of Justice’s Swiss Bank Program. “Because of the department’s continuing efforts to root out offshore tax evasion, Swiss banks are operating much differently today than they […]

A major Swiss bank will pay $211 million in a deal to avoid prosecution on charges it secretly helped American clients evade U.S. taxes, the Department of Justice said Monday. The agreement with BSI SA makes the private bank the first to come clean under a federal program that encourages overseas banks to disclose their […]

Tax Avoidance Or Tax Evasion? There Is A Difference According to a recent poll, voters in the United Kingdom don’t see a distinction between tax avoidance and tax evasion, at least not a moral one. According to a YouGov survey, 59 percent considered avoidance “unacceptable,” while only 32 percent thought it was legitimate. The pollsters […]

Stuart Gulliver, the boss of HSBC, grumbles that publicly owned businesses are now being held to a higher standard of behaviour than bishops. A more apt comparison might be medieval monks, given the self-flagellation that the London-based banking giant has felt obliged to perform in the wake of a tax-dodging scandal. It has run grovelling, […]

The venerable Coutts bank, home of the Queen’s personal accounts, has been drawn into the mounting controversy about private banking with an admission that its Swiss arm is under investigation for aiding and abetting tax evasion. Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns the 300-year-old Coutts, admitted on Thursday that German prosecutors are investigating current and […]