IRS Money Laundering Investigation Comes to Singapore

Just reported in the news today, "HSBC Clients With Singapore, India Accounts Said to Face U.S. Tax Probe". The IRS is investigating possible tax evasion by American citizens through bank accounts in Singapore. This follows a major crackdown on the Swiss private bank UBS for abetting tax evasion.

Just over a year ago, yours truly pointed out the risks that Singapore faced by positioning itself as a low-tax, private banking jurisdiction. I analyzed the UBS tax fraud case, and Andy Xie's accusation of Singapore being a high-rolling money laundering center. I noted that Singapore was rushing headlong into the private banking and casino business, businesses that depend on a sustained influx of large amounts of private capital, that often comes from illegally derived sources, or that is seeking to evade taxes.

The bloomberg article notes:

Several weeks ago, Downing toured Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing, meeting with regulators and bankers about offshore tax prosecutions. He spoke to tax lawyers at a conference sponsored by New York University on June 18.

“We just took down the largest private wealth management bank in the world,” Downing said, referring to UBS. “Do you really think we’re going to have trouble doing the next one?”

UBS Tax Fraud Makes Lee Kuan Yew Look Like a Dufus Dumbo

In April 2008, this blogger took note of Lee Kuan Yew's comments in an interview with Bloomberg. The octogenarian Minister Mentor was defending GIC, the Singaporean sovereign weath fund of which he is Chairman, which had made investments in UBS and Citigroup just months before. I have previously dealt with Citigroup and the prospect of its equity investors being wiped out due to nationalisation. But for this post, the subject of my analysis is UBS.

The Minister Mentor went on the record complimenting the private banking franchise of UBS, citing this as the reason why GIC made a significant investment in the famous Swiss bank:

"The franchise of the banks, the expertise that they have, under proper leadership, they will be able to recover and rise again ... Will there be another Swiss bank like UBS for wealth management? I doubt it, we doubt it, that is why we invested in it." -MM Lee, in a Bloomberg Interview, Apr 08

In an expression of his support for UBS, the Minister Mentor's GIC duly bet US$10 Billion of Singapore's hard-earned reserves that UBS would recover, with its revival driven by the world-renowned reputation of UBS' private banking business. Nevermind the huge investment banking losses that UBS had sustained - at least its private banking business was still intact and relatively untarnished.

Well, this week, that reputation for integrity has all but evaporated. UBS has admitted to defrauding the US government by helping some of its US clients conceal their assets. It is also paying US$780 million in fines and compensation to the US govt as a result.

UBS to Pay $780 Million Over U.S. Tax Charges
Swiss Bank to Name Some U.S. Clients

By David S. Hilzenrath and Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 19, 2009; D01

UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, agreed yesterday to pay $780 million to settle civil and criminal charges by the U.S. government that it helped thousands of American clients use Swiss accounts to evade U.S. taxes.

UBS also agreed to turn over the names of some of those clients.

The settlement ended a legal battle that pitted Switzerland's legendary tradition of bank secrecy against the U.S. government's determination to crack down on tax cheats.

But how the U.S. government resolved perhaps the central issue in its dispute with UBS was not disclosed, making it hard to assess how much the government gained in its battle against tax evasion.

The Justice Department charged that over several years UBS provided Swiss bank accounts to approximately 20,000 U.S. clients with assets of about $20 billion. About 17,000 of those clients concealed their identities and the existence of their UBS accounts from the IRS, the Justice Department alleged.

A key question in the investigation was whether the bank and the Swiss authorities would divulge information about all of the thousands of clients the U.S. government suspected of using UBS accounts to evade taxes or only those clients who met the much narrower Swiss legal conditions for parting the curtain of bank secrecy.

...

"UBS avoided compliance with U.S. securities laws for many years, at the same time they were engaged in other illegal conduct, which makes this one of the most egregious cases of its kind," Scott W. Friestad, deputy director of enforcement at the SEC, said in a statement.

...

"It is apparent that as an organization we made mistakes and that our control systems were inadequate," UBS chief executive Marcel Rohner said.

You might think $780 million is enough to settle the case. But the real damage has only just begun. The true fallout will be seen when UBS is finally forced to disclose the names of the US citizens who have secret bank accounts with UBS. This will truly shake the foundations of the private banking industry in Switzerland and set a new precedent for the private banking industry all over the world - including in Singapore. The prospective disclosure is now part of a civil lawsuit that US government is filing against UBS.

U.S. Sues UBS Seeking Swiss Account Customer Names
By David Voreacos and Carlyn Kolker

Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government sued UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, to try to force disclosure of the identities of as many as 52,000 American customers who allegedly hid their secret Swiss accounts from U.S. tax authorities.

U.S. customers had 32,940 secret accounts containing cash and 20,877 accounts holding securities, according to the Justice Department lawsuit filed today in federal court in Miami. U.S. customers failed to report and pay U.S. taxes on income earned in those accounts, which held about $14.8 billion in assets during the middle of this decade, according to the court filing.

“At a time when millions of Americans are losing their jobs, their homes and their health care, it is appalling that more than 50,000 of the wealthiest among us have actively sought to evade their civic and legal duty to pay taxes,” John A. DiCicco, acting assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s tax division, said in a statement.

...

Roy Smith, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner, said a UBS loss in the case would be “very bad news” for Swiss banks.

Swiss Secrecy

“If you get to the point where you’re able to get information on 52,000 accounts just because they exist, not because of evidence of a crime, you’ve gotten rid of Swiss banking secrecy forever,” Smith said. “If the European Union follows suit, it’ll virtually be the end of secret accounts in Switzerland.”

Swiss banks would still get business from Asia, Russia, eastern Europe and Africa, he noted.

The Justice Department accused UBS of conspiring to defraud the U.S. by helping 17,000 Americans hide accounts from the Internal Revenue Service. The U.S. will drop the charge in 18 months if the bank reforms its practices, helps prosecutors and makes payments.

In entering a deferred-prosecution agreement, UBS agreed to a statement of facts that said from 2000 to 2007, it actively helped “U.S. individual taxpayers in establishing accounts at UBS in a manner designed to conceal the U.S. taxpayers’ ownership or beneficial interest in said accounts.”

Evading Requirements

UBS bankers “facilitated the creation of such accounts in the names of offshore companies, allowing such U.S. taxpayers to evade reporting requirements,” according to the statement of facts. Prosecutors filed a complaint, unsealed yesterday, accusing UBS of conspiring to defraud the U.S. by helping Americans hide accounts from the IRS.

“UBS and its U.S. clients knew that it violated U.S. law for U.S. taxpayers to maintain undeclared accounts with UBS in Switzerland -- whether the accounts held cash or securities,” IRS agent Daniel Reeves said in a declaration filed with today’s lawsuit.

...

Private bankers went to great lengths to hide their clients’ identities and assure them of Swiss customs of secrecy, prosecutors said in the criminal complaint filed against UBS. In January 2003, after UBS signed an agreement to share tax information with the IRS, bank managers sent U.S. clients letters saying they had kept client identities secret since 1939.

Some bankers went so far as to develop written codes to hide their communications about U.S. clients’ assets, according to court documents filed in today’s lawsuit.

In June, U.S. prosecutors secured the guilty plea of a former UBS private banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, who is cooperating with investigators. Another Switzerland-based UBS banker, Raoul Weil, was indicted on a charge that he helped rich Americans evade taxes.

Private banks take pride in providing their clients with secrecy and privacy. Because many of their clients are exceptionally wealthy and do not wish for the composition or magnitude of their assets to be known to the public. But in this case, UBS clearly went too far. It abused the bank secrecy laws for its clients and helped to facilitate tax fraud - and the worst thing is that UBS has admitted doing so knowingly and for several years. Is this what Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, are trying to model Singapore after?

Singapore in recent years has made massive efforts to enter into the integrated resort (gambling) and private banking industries. Both are heavily interrelated in that they both attract money inflows from the rich and wealthy. But which rich and wealthy are we trying to attract?

Some of you might remember that in October 2006, a certain Andy Xie, who was then Asia Chief Economist of Morgan Stanley, was fired after making certain comments about Singapore's Economy. Amongst the derisive comments he made about Singapore's economy, the following were the most cutting:

"Actually, Singapore’s success came mainly from being the money laundering center for corrupt Indonesian businessmen and government officials. Indonesia has no money. So Singapore isn’t doing well. To sustain its economy, Singapore is building casinos to attract corrupt money from China." - Andy Xie, ex Morgan Stanley Asia Chief Economist

Is this what Singapore is turning into, a full fledged money laundering center? Is this the plan, with two massive integrated resorts flying high-rollers from the region in to gamble with their millions, and many more private banks to stash their cash away in secret accounts, while gambling even bigger sums in the global financial markets?

As a Singaporean, the latest unraveling of tax fraud charges against UBS, the largest private bank in the world, truly makes me shudder. Switzerland, at least, has other things to fall back upon when it faces a setback of such magnitude. But can Singapore's reputation and economy survive such a hit if something similar happens to us in the future? Our government has not had many ideas in recent years to drive Singapore's growth - and if our push into IRs and private banking fails, Singapore's economic growth could be set back several long years.

GIC's bet on UBS is a mistake that Singapore can ultimately recover from. But the PAP's bet on private banking and gambling may someday prove to be catastrophic for our nation.

Singapore's SWFs and the 3 Behemoths of Mass Implosion

What do UBS AG, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup have in common?

A. They're all banks which have received significant cash infusions from Singapore's Sovereign Wealth Funds, GIC and Temasek.

B. They're the 3 largest casualties of the ongoing credit crisis.

Behemoths of Mass Implosion

Meredith Whitney, one of the most prominent Wall Street bank stock analysts, recently put out research notes either downgrading or cutting financial estimates for the three banks:

Merrill, rated “underperform,” faces “headwinds of deleveraging and the next disruptive step of restructuring.” ...

Ms. Whitney says she continues to “be negative in our outlook on Citigroup due simply to the fact that the company has seriously constrained earnings power, in addition to the writedowns seen in 2Q08,” which she estimates will hit $12.2-billion. ...

UBS is rated “underperform” by Oppenheimer because the Swiss bank “faces a difficult task of navigating through its risk exposures from the investment bank and rebuilding its damaged wealth management franchise.”

Whitney's pessimisim is not without good reason. UBS AG, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, have been the banks with the largest total bank writedowns to date, far and ahead of the rest of their peers:

Citigroup leads the pack, with UBS and Merrill trailing close behind. But the gap between these three banks and the rest is extremely large - HSBC is the next closest with about half of Merrill's damage.

The same three banks lead in another key statistical metric: writedowns/market cap ratio:

This time, Merrill leads the charge. UBS and Citigroup fare better on this ratio, but still are way higher than the rest of the pack.

The stock markets have, in turn responded to the financial carnage the banks have inflicted on themselves: Merrill, Citigroup and UBS are amongst the top 5 % decliners in stock price:

Meanwhile, the 1-year performance of the stocks have indeed been nothing to envy:


The Dubious Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew just a month ago made some comments about GIC's splendid investments in Citigroup and UBS:

"The franchise of the banks, the expertise that they have, under proper leadership, they will be able to recover and rise again ... Will there be another Swiss bank like UBS for wealth management? I doubt it, we doubt it, that is why we invested in it." Citigroup, he added, had "an enormous spread worldwide as a retail bank".

These statements have indeed turned out to be questionable, if not downright wrong. UBS' 'unparalleled' wealth management franchise appears to be undergoing an unparalleled tax evasion investigation:

UBS shares hit by talk of further losses, tax evasion case
Jun 23, 2008

ZURICH (AFP) — Shares in Swiss banking giant UBS plunged on Monday amid talk of further losses and as investors worried that a US tax evasion case around a former employee could widen to the bank itself.

At the close, UBS shares showed a fall of 4.42 percent to 22.06 Swiss francs on the Zurich stock exchange, after a loss of 3.27 percent on Friday. The overall market was down 0.60 percent.

In a note to investors, an analyst at Credit Suisse warned that UBS's wealth management could come under "significant pressure" if the tax evasion investigations broadens to a case directly impacting the bank.

"In a worst case scenario, UBS could lose its banking license which could have adverse effects on the global private banking franchise," she wrote.

On Sunday, Swiss newspaper Sonntag reported that US law enforcement officials had made a formal request to come to Switzerland to investigate a tax evasion case involving UBS.

The move has been sparked by the confession of former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld to a Florida court last week that he conspired to help US clients dodge millions of dollars in taxes.

Swiss officials from the justice and finance ministries have already travelled to Washington for talks with their US counterparts amid concern the case could damage the overall reputation of Switzerland's financial industry.

The subprime damage and the suspected tax evasion has had severe consequences for the top leadership of the bank:

UBS AG (UBS) was at the center of a tornado of crushing news Tuesday, as it announced major changes to its board amidst pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice to reveal the names of top clients taking advantage of the bank’s tax breaks.

Four of the No. 1 Swiss bank’s board members - Stephan Haeringer, Rolf Meyer, Peter Spuhler and Lawrence Weinbach - will step down at the bank’s Oct. 2 shareholder meeting.

...

The bank has been the biggest European casualty to the U.S. subprime-mortgage crisis. It has written down more than $38 billion in the last three quarters, and its stock has dropped more than 57% year-to-date.

Continuing that trend, the bank will likely post a second-quarter loss with another markdown of about $4.9 billion, according to Bloomberg News estimates.

UBS said it will immediately submit board-member recommendations to the governance committee and will explore redefining directors’ and management’s responsibilities.

So, not only has UBS taken a severe beating in the subprime mortgage crisis, its wealth management business is undergoing severe pressures as well.

How about Citigroup's "enormous spread worldwide as a retail bank"? Well, it seems that is turning out to be a liability, rather than an asset.

Citigroup plans to sell $400 billion in assets
International Herald Tribune
By Eric Dash; Friday, May 9, 2008

Vikram Pandit is doing some serious spring cleaning at Citigroup.

Since becoming chief executive in December, Pandit has been clearing out the corporate attic of weak businesses and unloading worrisome assets at bargain-basement prices.

In an effort to streamline the sprawling company and placate restive shareholders, Pandit has sold or closed more than 45 branches in eight states. He has also disposed of Citigroup's headquarters building in Tokyo and its investment-banking base in New York and ditched more than $12.5 billion in loans used to finance corporate buyouts. And he has jettisoned the Diners Club credit card franchise, Citi's commercial leasing divisions and a big pension administration unit.

Pandit is not done yet. After months of false starts, Citigroup is now trying to sell Primerica Financial, a life insurance and mutual fund company, according to people close to the situation. He is also looking to sell its back-office outsourcing unit in India and its Smith Barney brokerage firm in Australia. Some speculate he also may try to sell 340 bank branches in Germany, possibly to Deutsche Bank.

On Friday, at Pandit's first major presentation to investors and analysts, Citigroup said that it planned to sell about $400 billion in assets in the next two to three years.

As it turns out, Vikram Pandit is trying to get rid of many of Citigroup's assets. Citigroup's worldwide sprawl made it a giant behemoth to big to manage. On top of that, Vikram Pandit has absolutely no experience running a consumer bank. Does Lee Kuan Yew really like such a person managing Citigroup's wide retail sprawl?

Suffering the Consequences

Who is taking the brunt of all this financial damage? Ultimately, it is the shareholders of these banks. And although GIC and Temasek have incorporated some sort of short term guaranteed returns for their investments in the banks, ultimately, these investments will convert into equity and suffer the effects of dilution:

Shareholders take brunt of banks' capital raising
Saturday June 21, 7:26 am ET
By Joe Bel Bruno, AP Business Writer
Banks cutting dividends, diluting shares to raise badly needed capital

NEW YORK (AP) -- America's banks and brokerages are scrambling to raise badly needed cash, but it may be at the expense of shareholders.

Since the subprime mortgage market imploded, financial companies caught in the fallout have been raising capital in two major ways -- cutting dividends and issuing more shares. Both methods erode shareholder value; analysts believe the industry is poised for more.

"The market is now seeing a substantial increase in financial companies issuing common and convertible instruments in an effort to shore up liquidity," said Standard & Poor's senior index analyst Howard Silverblatt. "The additional financing gives them immediate breathing room, with the payback being longer term dilution."

Put plainly, their gain is your pain.

Just this past week, Fifth Third Bancorp Chief Executive Kevin Kabat needed a cash infusion of $2 billion to bail out his struggling regional bank, while KeyCorp CEO Henry Meyer needed $1.5 billion. Both will issue stock to boost their balance sheets.

Banks have raised more than $60 billion this year by selling common and preferred shares.

The issuance of new stock acts to dilute the value of current shareholders because profit gets split among more shares. It's like having the family over for a turkey dinner and at the last minute grandpa invites the neighbors, too. There'll be less for everybody.

The end of the credit crisis is no where in sight, and the banks have yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And from how things are going right now, that light seems quite far away.

The writedowns at the banks have resulted in corresponding losses in stock price. And dilution of shareholders returns due to capital raisings only add to these woes. These are real losses that Singapore's SWFs will suffer; the supposed downside protection they built into their investments are but a short-term illusion.

Were these investments a good idea? We will only know for sure in a few years time when we have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

But the way things are going, the prospects for these investments simply don't look good at all.

GIC, UBS & Jim Rogers

Back on 10th December 2007, the following was reported on Channel News Asia regarding GIC's investment in UBS.

The Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC) is injecting 11 million Swiss francs, or nearly US$10 billion, into the troubled Swiss banking giant UBS.

This will give GIC an almost 9 percent stake in UBS.

The deal comes as UBS announced that it was making further multi-billion dollar writedowns for its US sub-prime exposure.

A few months later, on March 5th, 2008, the following was reported on many news sources, including reuters, about Jim Rogers' comments that Singapore was going to lose money on its investments in investment banks. (For those who don't know, Jim Rogers is one of the most successful investors of all time, and partnered George Soros when the two ran their Quantum Fund)

"It grieves me to see what Singapore is doing. They are going to lose money," he added, referring to investments by Government of Singapore Investment Corp and Temasek in Citigroup, Switzerland's UBS and Merrill Lynch.

Just today (April 1st, 2008) UBS has announced massive losses and is again trying to raise capital, just a few months after its massive capital raising exercise that involved GIC. Reuters reports:

UBS AG doubled its writedowns from the subprime crisis, parted company with its chairman and asked shareholders for more emergency capital on Tuesday in a second dramatic attempt to reverse its fortunes.

The Swiss bank wrote down an additional $19 billion on U.S. real estate and related assets, causing a net loss of 12 billion Swiss francs ($12.03 billion) in the first quarter, and said it would seek 15 billion francs through a rights issue of shares.

But what is interesting about GIC's 'investment' is that UBS has been characterised as requesting more 'emergency capital' to 'reverse its fortunes'. I'm not sure I'd really put money in such a company and call it an investment.

Well, of course, GIC and Temasek would say that their investments are 'for the long term' and that the performance of these investments cannot be evaluated simply on the basis of their performance in a few short months.

After all, a 40% drop in stock price in 4 months can't be that bad... right?

Well, in any case, it looks like Jim Rogers is far out in the lead in this race as to who will eventually turn out to be right (click for full images):