Foreign bankers charged with aiding U.S. tax evasion

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A federal court in Florida on Tuesday unsealed a grand jury indictment charging two European bankers with helping an American billionaire real estate developer hide $200 million in assets from U.S. tax authorities, U.S. prosecutors in Fort Lauderdale said.

The one-count indictment charged Bradley Birkenfeld, 43, and Mario Staggl, 43, with conspiring to defraud the United States by helping the unidentified U.S. citizen create bogus corporations and other entities to conceal his ownership of hidden offshore assets, according to a statement from the prosecutors.

Prosecutors said Birkenfeld, who appeared in court on Tuesday, worked for a Swiss bank, but did not name the institution.

The Financial Times's Web site reported on Tuesday that Birkenfeld, a U.S. citizen who lives in Switzerland, is a former UBS AG private banker and was a member of a team headed by UBS senior banker Martin Liechti.

Liechti was briefly detained earlier this month by U.S. authorities in connection with probes into whether UBS helped its U.S. clients evade tax obligations.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating UBS's conduct in relation to cross-border services provided by UBS advisors to U.S. clients from 2000 to 2007, the firm said earlier this month.

The bank said at the time that it was cooperating with the investigations. UBS could not be reached for comment about Birkenfeld's indictment.

Staggl, a Liechtenstein citizen and resident, remained at large, prosecutors said. They did not identify his place of employment.

In 2001, the Swiss bank agreed to identify U.S. citizens who received reportable income coming from U.S. sources by requiring them to fill out U.S. tax forms, the prosecutors said.

The bank also agreed to issue U.S. tax forms to U.S. customers regarding the payment of dividends, interest, rents, royalties and other income paid into their offshore accounts, and to pass the information to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the prosecutors said.

Staggl and Birkenfeld traveled to the United States to pitch a tax evasion scheme aimed at evading the bank's agreement with the IRS, in spite of the agreement to provide more transparency about accounts owned by U.S. citizens, the prosecutors said.

Attorneys for the two men could not be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Gina Keating; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Carol Bishopric)