The Swiss bank UBS and United States federal prosecutors sought on Sunday to delay a hearing scheduled for Monday so the two sides could try to settle their closely watched dispute over the release of names of wealthy American clients of the bank who are suspected of offshore tax evasion.
But the postponement request, made in a joint legal filing in a federal court in Florida, came amid fresh threats by the Justice Department that it might impose financial sanctions on UBS and possibly indict the bank should it continue to refuse to disclose the names if required to do so by a judge.
“UBS has not yet faced all the consequences of its illegal conduct in the United States,” said a Justice Department filing in the case on Sunday.
The two sides are scheduled to square off on Monday in front of Judge Alan S. Gold of Federal District Court in Miami. The joint filing asked Judge Gold to delay the hearing and reschedule it for Aug. 3 if a settlement was not reached by then. Judge Gold is to decide on the postponement early Monday.
The dispute between UBS and the United States has escalated into a diplomatic drama and has threatened to pierce the veil of Swiss financial secrecy. UBS and the Swiss government have said they will not disclose client names, even if ordered by a judge, because doing so would violate Swiss laws governing financial secrecy and subject UBS executives to prosecution in Switzerland.
In February, the Internal Revenue Service, backed by the Justice Department, sued UBS, the world’s largest private bank and a pillar of the Swiss economy, to force it to disclose the names of 52,000 wealthy American clients suspected of tax evasion through UBS’s offshore private banking division.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/business/13ubs.html?th&emc=th
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