Ex-UBS banker Weil agrees to extradition to US

Weil lives and works in his native Switzerland but was arrested on holiday in Italy Keystone

Former UBS wealth management boss Raoul Weil has agreed to go to the United States to face trial for aiding and abetting tax evaders after being arrested in Italy, his lawyer and judicial sources have confirmed.

Weil has been held in an Italian jail for over five weeks after police arrested him in Bologna where he was holidaying with his wife.

The 54-year-old Swiss citizen parted company with Switzerland’s largest bank in 2009 after being declared a fugitive by the US courts for failing to respond to a criminal indictment issued in 2008. UBS paid a $780 million fine in 2009 after admitting to aiding and abetting US citizens accused of tax evasion.

Weil was charged with allegedly conspiring to help 17,000 American clients of UBS avoid taxes.

Weil’s lawyer, Aaron R. Marcu of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in New York told Reuters: “Mr. Weil agreed to extradition to the U.S. because he has always been prepared to confront these charges.”

Judicial sources told Reuters Weil had agreed to be extradited at a court hearing in Bologna on Monday.

Several Swiss bankers and lawyers have been indicted in the US for their alleged part in helping wealthy US citizens hide their assets from the tax authorities.
 
Weil is one of the most prominent of the accused having moved through the ranks of UBS’s vaunted wealth management business to become chief executive and then chairman of its global wealth management division.
 
The Florida court indictment accuses Weil of playing a prominent role in helping UBS’s US clients to hide around $20 billion in undeclared assets between 2002 and 2007. The banker has strenuously denied the allegation.
 
Weil lives and works in Switzerland. He is a managing partner at Reuss Private Group, a financial consultancy company based in Pfäffikon, canton Schwyz, according to the firm’s website. He has worked there since 2010.