11 indicted over UBS account-concealing scheme

Indictments were filed last week against 11 defendants in the UBS Swiss bank affair, the State Prosecutor’s Office Taxation and Economic Crimes Division announced Sunday.

According to the indictments, which were the latest in a series of such actions, the defendants included businesspeople, lawyers and salaried employees who used their accounts at the bank to conceal investment profits ranging from hundreds of thousands of shekels to some NIS 5 million.

One of the defendants, David Peleg, allegedly moved funds that had increased in value from 1993 through 2011 to UBS from another bank in 2011 in order to better conceal them from taxation.

He also withdrew around NIS 4.3m. from 2004 through 2013 in incremental sums, all the while concealing the funds from tax authorities.

Charges in the case include fraud, deception, omitting income from tax returns and filing false tax returns.

Of the 11 indictments, one was part of a plea bargain in which the defendant is only being charged with failing to report income on his tax return.

The funds in the cases originally were not taxable, either because they were exempt gifts or from the estates of deceased family members.

However, once the funds were received and started earning new income, they became taxable.

The defendants concealed both the existence of the accounts themselves and any interest, dividends or securities income derived from the concealed funds and which might have been taxable.

A former UBS official helped the defendants maneuver around the tax authorities, in a series of secret meetings.

Earlier indictments for money-laundering and tax fraud in the case were filed against former On Clinic owners Boris Weissman and Avissar Weissman; Meron Neeman; Moshe Rachamut; and Arik Israeli.