Ex-UBS Banker Weil Faces French Charges of Aiding Tax Evasion
Raoul Weil, a former UBS Group AG banker, faces tax-dodging charges in France less than a year after he was acquitted of U.S. tax conspiracy allegations.
France’s national financial prosecutor charged Weil with helping tax evasion
and illicit marketing and set a payment similar to bail at 200,000 euros
($226,000) as he remains free to move, a spokesman for the Paris-based
authority said. Weil, 55, once ran UBS’s global wealth-management business.
UBS, the world’s largest money-manager for the rich, was last year forced to pay a 1.1 billion-euro security deposit to cover potential penalties in a French tax-evasion probe. The Swiss bank has described the French investigation as a “highly politicized process” and said it has “taken significant and broad steps to ensure tax compliance of our clients and will continue to do so.”
Aaron Marcu, Weil’s lawyer in the U.S., didn’t have an immediate comment on the charges. UBS spokesman Andreas Kessler declined to comment on the French charges against the Swiss citizen.
In the U.S., Weil was cleared in November of tax conspiracy by a federal jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, despite the bank’s 2009 admission that it helped thousands of American clients cheat the Internal Revenue Service.
