A renowned U.S. business professor who taught for Rochester-Bern executive programs has been fined $100 million – for hiding millions in an offshore Swiss bank account.
Credit Suisse ended its U.S. criminal investigation into how it helped wealthy Americans cheat on their taxes in 2014. But U.S. investigators' hunt for tax dodgers and cheats hasn’t ended there.
Dan Horsky, a professor emeritus of business administration at the University of Rochester, was recently sentenced by U.S. justice officials to a $100 million fine, as «The Wall Street Journal» (behind paywall) reported.
Fighter Pilot
The Israel-born Horsky was accused to hiding as much as $200 million in startup profits with a Zurich bank in order to hide them from U.S. tax officials. Various media have speculated that the bank could be Credit Suisse.
But the real reason the case is noteworthy is that Horsky, a former fighter pilot, used to teach Switzerland's brightest bankers at a dual MBA program between Rochester and the University of Bern.
Rochester in Bern
Specifically, Horsky taught at Rochester-Bern, an academic program that allows Swiss executives to study towards an MBA without taking a break from work or leaving home. Horsky taught marketing in spring 1996 and again the following spring as an exchange from the Simon Business School of the University of Rochester, the program head, Petra Joerg, told finews.com.
The education is among the most well-known of its type in Switzerland, and was founded in 1994 as a branch of the Simon Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester. It is based at the University of Bern, with which it maintains close ties, and offers the only program in Switzerland where students can earn an American MBA.
Close Banking Ties
Swiss banking has also long maintained close ties to the program: the Swiss Finance Institute, or SFI, offers a diploma in advanced banking studies in cooperation with Rochester-Bern, which has churned out more than 1,500 graduates so far.
UBS in particular has extremely close ties to Rochester-Bern, which initiated an executive program for the Swiss bank’s experienced client advisors. Successful graduates earn a «master of science in wealth management» from Simon Business School and a «master of advanced studies in finance» from University of Bern.
Opel’s Honorary Doctorate
The ties to UBS go back more than a decade: The University of Rochester awarded an honorary doctorate to disgraced UBS chairman Marcel Ospel in 2005.
«From UBS’ acquisition phase in the 1990s in the U.K. and the U.S. to the integration of Swiss Bank Corporation and SBG into today’s UBS, the strategic performance is being recognized,» according to a laudation held for Ospel, who was forced to step down in 2008 under pressure from the Swiss regulator as massive losses piled up.
Today, the MBA program, which seeks to sharpen the strategic and analytical facilities of its students, distances itself from the criminal actions of its former professor. Simon Business School emphasized to finews.com that it fully supports the investigation – and removed a portrait of its 71-year-old professor emeritus from its website shortly after.
