A system of hand-written notebooks between UBS bankers and management roused suspicion in the Swiss bank's French criminal trial. A former top executive had a simple explanation.
It was simply for divvying up bonuses – this is how Patrick de Fayet explained the existence of hand-written notebooks, which were later destroyed. Prosecutors allege that the bank maintained a parallel record on its tax-dodging clients in the ledgers.
De Fayets, the former head of UBS' front office in France, was responding to questions by French prosecutors at a trial in Paris, as news agency «Bloomberg» reported. He claimed that UBS merely used hand-written records to divvy up bonuses between Swiss and French bankers.
Money Feuds
Private bankers were measured on how much in net new funds they routed to their colleagues abroad. Disputes arising from whether the Swiss or French side had earned the bonus necessitated the hand-written notes, de Fayet told the court.
As soon as the data was entered into a wider electronic record, the notes were destroyed. Prosecutor Serge Roques, who questioned de Fayet, found this practice troubling.
Whistleblower Stéphanie Gibaud was the first to report on the hand-written ledgers in a 2014 book. The former marketing manager at UBS in France laid the basis for the prosecution's case against the Swiss bank.
UBS Couldn't Verify
De Fayet was queried on the whether his clients came clean on their tax bill. He said clients had largely kept it to themselves if they had not paid taxes in France.
UBS itself couldn't verify whether clients did pay taxes, de Fayet said – the only thing that bankers knew for certainty was that clients who wanted to park their money in Switzerland would be reminded of their tax obligation.
