A private bank in Switzerland has agreed to pay a $122.9 million fine for helping wealthy U.S. citizens hide as much as $5.6 billion in assets.
According to the Justice Department, Banque Pictet & Cie allowed Americans to secretly hold billions of dollars in 1,637 bank accounts between 2008 and 2014.
Justice Department officials say the shady accounts protected customers from paying $50.6 million in taxes.
“Today, Banque Pictet et Cie admitted to actively helping U.S. taxpayers use encrypted accounts, foreign trusts and entities, nominated beneficiaries, and other deceptions to hide their income and assets abroad.
For this criminal conduct, the bank will pay nearly $122.9 million in restitution, fee waivers and a financial penalty, and is required to fully cooperate with any investigations related to these secret accounts.”
The fine will be used in part to pay taxes that the bank’s customers evaded and to claw back any profits the bank made on the accounts.
The company is working with the Justice Department and should also support future investigations into the people who hid their assets at the bank.
Banque Pictet et Cie is owned by The Pictet Group, which was founded in 1805 and has approximately $691 billion in assets.
The Pictet Group operates primarily in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Bahamas and has two main business divisions: institutional asset management and private private banking.
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