Business

Swiss bankers had fondue for brains

Meet the Three Swiss Stooges.

Michael Berlinka, Urs Frei and Roger Keller — bankers for Switzerland’s oldest private bank, Wegelin & Co. — were indicted yesterday by Manhattan federal prosecutors for conspiring with wealthy US tax cheats to hide some $1.2 billion in assets.

What makes the scheme so harebrained is that it was allegedly triggered by news that the IRS was investigating Swiss banking giant UBS for also helping tax cheats.

Prosecutors said that the three bankers viewed news of the UBS investigation as the perfect ploy to attract new US clients.

The bankers told worried US tax cheats that they were “less vulnerable to United States law enforcement pressure” because, unlike rival UBS, Wegelin had no offices outside Switzerland.

In describing the scheme to Wegelin personnel, one top executive, who was not named in the indictment but labeled a co-conspirator, assured Wegelin staffers that the bank “was not exposed to the risk of prosecution that UBS faced because [it] was smaller than UBS.”

The unnamed executive also told staffers that Wegelin could charge high fees to clients fleeing UBS and other banks targeted by the US crackdown specifically because they were so “afraid of prosecution.”

Federal prosecutors have brought tax charges against dozens of former US clients of Switzerland’s two biggest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, as well as bankers and attorneys.

US taxpayers are required to report money in a foreign bank account, along with income earned on that account, on their federal income tax returns if the account holds more than $10,000 at any time during a given year.

The three defendants, who reside in Switzerland, each face a maximum term of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. The bankers helped at least 70 US taxpayers open accounts in the wake of the UBS probe, according to prosecutors.

They did this by opening the accounts in the names of sham corporations and foundations so the clients could avoid detection from the IRS.

Wegelein did not respond to a request for comment.