Word: switzerland
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Several big beneficiaries are also engaged in controversial activities at odds with U.S. policy. One example is UBS, the Union Bank of Switzerland, which got $5 billion. It recently reached a $780 million deferred-prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice to settle charges that it had deployed undisclosed offshore bank accounts to assist rich Americans in evading U.S. taxes. DoJ is still seeking to force UBS to disclose the names of 52,000 Americans suspected as part of the alleged scheme...
...times one of his victims had called him on his scam. Sgarbi's usual ploy, according to investigators, was to prowl hotel bars. Not just any hotel bars, though. The soft-spoken man booked himself into exclusive spas in Austria and Switzerland, places that invite well-paying clientele to leave their normal life behind, to unwind and open up. Selling himself as someone in need of rest as well, Sgarbi would strike up conversation when his victim's guard was down. For some of his victims, the handsome man must have seemed just like part of the therapy...
Credit Suisse, Switzerland's second largest bank, posted a $7 billion loss in 2008 and slashed thousands of jobs. But so far it has not suffered from the loss of client confidence that UBS faces. The biggest winners are small banks because "they keep their noses clean and stay out of the United States," Bretholz says. "The Swiss want their money to be safe, and they can no longer find security in big banks that operate internationally and are exposed to global risks...
...says Georg Lutz, a political scientist at Lausanne's Foundation for Research in Social Sciences. But Lutz points out that the Swiss had rebounded from scandals and corporate downfalls before, such as the controversy in the 1990s surrounding the dormant Holocaust bank accounts, or the collapse, in 2001, of Switzerland's former national airline. "At that time we were upset too, but we got over it and moved on," Lutz says. "So in the end the UBS fiasco will not have a lasting negative effect on the national psyche...
Perhaps. For now, though, Swiss citizens have decided that their financial institutions are no longer something they can bank on. In Switzerland, that's revolutionary...