U.S. Senate to hear on foreign bank tax shelters

By Ilaina Jonas

NEW YORK, July 16 (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate subcommittee is scheduled to hold hearings on Thursday on a practice by some foreign banks, including UBS (UBSN.VX), that the subcommittee says have helped wealthy Americans to skirt taxes.

The hearings follow a six-month probe by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into practices by LGT Bank in Liechtenstein and Switzerland's UBS.

Since 2001, LGT and UBS have maintained thousands of U.S. client accounts with billions in assets that have not been disclosed to the IRS, the subcommittee said.

UBS has an estimated 19,000 accounts in Switzerland for U.S. clients with assets valued at $18 billion and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has identified at least 100 U.S. taxpayers with accounts at LGT, the subcommittee said in a written statement.

UBS was not available for immediate comment.

Among those who have accounts is Peter Lowy, group managing director of Australia-based Westfield Group (WDC.AX), one of the world's largest owners of shopping malls.

Lowy is also chief executive of Westfield America, which is developing the retail portion of the World Trade Center and owns 55 other U.S. properties, and he is a U.S. citizen and thus subject to U.S. law.

Lowy was asked to testify in Thursday's hearings but will be out of the country, said his attorney Robert Bennett, a partner in law firm Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

"He will voluntarily be appearing on July 25 at 10 a.m.," Bennett told Reuters, adding that his client did nothing wrong.

LGT Bank became a target of German prosecutors who began probing hundreds of prominent people who may have hidden their wealth in the tiny principality of Liechtenstein.

In May two European bankers, Bradley Birkenfeld and Mario Staggl, who both had worked for UBS, were indicted and accused of helping an American billionaire real estate developer hide $200 million in assets from U.S. tax authorities.

From at least 2000 and 2007, LGT and UBS used banking practices that could help and resulted in tax evasion by U.S. clients, advising them on complex offshore structures where they could hide assets, the subcommittee said. (Editing by Braden Reddall)