An 83-year-old Massachusetts man on Tuesday was sentenced to pay back millions in penalties and back taxes for spending years hiding his wealth from the Internal Revenue System in Swiss Bank Accounts.
Jacques Wajsfelner hid $5.7 million from U.S. tax authorities, failing to file Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts Reports from 2006 to 2011.
A judge in a federal court in Manhattan ordered Wajsfelner to pay a civil penalty of $2.8 million and $419,940 in back taxes. He was also given sixth months of probation, including three months of home confinement, authorities said.
Wajsfelner’s financial adviser Beda Singenberger was charged in July 2011 with conspiring with U.S. taxpayers to hide more than $184 million in various Swiss banks. The case against Singenberger is still pending.
The German-born Wajsfelner opened an account in his own name at Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, beginning in 1995.
In 2006, authorties believe Singenberger helped Wajsfelner open an undeclared account at the Swiss bank using the name of the fake corporation “Ample Lion.”
“By opening the Ample Lion account at Credit Suisse, Wajsfelner was attempting to obscure his ownership of the assets in the account from the IRS,” said a statement released by Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
In the fall of 2008, Credit Suisse ended its U.S. cross-border banking business, and in order to continue hiding money he opened an account with Swiss bank Wegelin. By the end of 2010 the account was valued at $5.5 million.
On Monday, Wegelin was and ordered to pay nearly $58 million to the United States for their role in the tax evasion schemes.
