Ponce
26th April 2010, 08:32 AM
Tax evader who blamed Holocaust gets 10 months
By CURT ANDERSON • Associated Press • April 26, 2010
MIAMI — A tax evader was sentenced Friday to 10 months in federal prison after claiming his Jewish parents' experience fleeing the Nazi Holocaust drove him to compulsively hide more than $10 million in secret accounts at Swiss bank UBS AG and other offshore tax havens.
U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan imposed the longest sentence to date for a UBS client against 65-year-old Jack Barouh, even after giving him credit for cooperating in the ongoing investigation and belatedly attempting to come clean with the Internal Revenue Service.
Barouh pleaded guilty in February, the latest in a string of convictions won by the Justice Department after UBS last year admitted orchestrating tax evasion among rich U.S. clients and paid a $780 million fine. UBS also separately agreed to turn over more than 4,450 names of wealthy Americans suspected of dodging taxes through secret UBS accounts.
Jordan noted that Barouh has sought psychiatric help for the Holocaust compulsion, which his attorney described as the desire to "hide and hoard" assets to guard against a potential repeat of the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews during World War II. After Barouh's family fled Austria, they settled in Bogota, Colombia, where Barouh was born.
"He and his family might lose everything, exactly as his parents risked everything in the 1940s," Jordan said in explaining the fear.
By CURT ANDERSON • Associated Press • April 26, 2010
MIAMI — A tax evader was sentenced Friday to 10 months in federal prison after claiming his Jewish parents' experience fleeing the Nazi Holocaust drove him to compulsively hide more than $10 million in secret accounts at Swiss bank UBS AG and other offshore tax havens.
U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan imposed the longest sentence to date for a UBS client against 65-year-old Jack Barouh, even after giving him credit for cooperating in the ongoing investigation and belatedly attempting to come clean with the Internal Revenue Service.
Barouh pleaded guilty in February, the latest in a string of convictions won by the Justice Department after UBS last year admitted orchestrating tax evasion among rich U.S. clients and paid a $780 million fine. UBS also separately agreed to turn over more than 4,450 names of wealthy Americans suspected of dodging taxes through secret UBS accounts.
Jordan noted that Barouh has sought psychiatric help for the Holocaust compulsion, which his attorney described as the desire to "hide and hoard" assets to guard against a potential repeat of the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews during World War II. After Barouh's family fled Austria, they settled in Bogota, Colombia, where Barouh was born.
"He and his family might lose everything, exactly as his parents risked everything in the 1940s," Jordan said in explaining the fear.