The Swiss insurer put to bed a seven-year criminal investigation into how it helped Americans hide nearly $1.5 billion offshore.
The Zurich-based insurer will pay $77.4 million to settle a probe into tax evasion via deferred prosecution agreement, the U.S. Justice Department said in a press release. Swiss Life said it had booked the provision for the fine last year in a separate statement (in German).
The Swiss insurer's probe was an offshoot of a long-running tax crackdown on Switzerland's offshore sector which ultimately extracted more than $10 billion from a large number of institutes, including major banks UBS and Credit Suisse, and smaller players such as Rahn + Bodmer, which settled two months ago. Geneva's Pictet is the last bank to remain on the hook with U.S. criminal investigators.
Wrapping Offshore
Swiss Life's domestic arm as well as subsidiaries in Liechtenstein, Singapore, and Luxembourg were accused of conspiring with U.S. taxpayers and others to hide more than $1.45 billion offshore including in some 1,600 so-called insurance wrapper policies, U.S. justice officials said.
«The recovery...sends an unequivocal message that offshore evasion is still a high priority of Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation,» the U.S. prosecutors said.
