‘Singapore Solution’ tax scam: Swiss executive spared jail time
AN EXECUTIVE at a Swiss holding company was sentenced to no prison time for participating in a scheme to help US taxpayers hide more than US$60 million in assets in a fraudulent arrangement known as the “Singapore Solution”.
Daniel Walchli, 56, pleaded guilty last year to a single count of conspiracy to defraud the US for his role in setting up a structure for American clients of Privatbank IHAG to evade scrutiny by tax authorities. US district judge Gregory Woods sentenced Walchli on Tuesday (Apr 2) to the brief time he spent in custody after surrendering in 2022.
Walchli was a member of the executive board of Zurich’s IHAG Holding, which owned Privatbank. Charges were unsealed against him in 2021 along with two IHAG bankers, Swiss financial firm Allied Finance Trust and two of its executives.
Walchli admitted conspiring with Privatbank executives and others from 2008 to 2014 to allow favoured clients to maintain secret accounts despite stepped-up US government enforcement and investigation of accounts held by American taxpayers in Switzerland.
According to prosecutors, the bankers approached a handful of high-net-worth clients to help them continue to hide assets from the US government by making transfers to accounts in other countries, then repatriating the funds to Switzerland in new accounts nominally held by a Singapore-based asset management firm.
“I deeply regret what I have done, to you, Your Honour, to the government and to the American people,” Walchli told the judge at a sentencing hearing in Manhattan federal court.
Most of the hidden assets that were cited in the case belonged to a Manhattan hedge fund manager identified in the indictment only as “Client-1”.
One of the other taxpayers, Wayne Franklyn Chinn, pleaded guilty in San Francisco federal court in 2019 to participating in the scheme. Chinn agreed to turn over US$2.2 million. BLOOMBERG
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