Prince Charles pal and trading veteran hit with £114m tax fine
PRINCE Charles’s friend Urs Schwarzenbach, the polo playing currency trader in the middle of Switzerland’s biggest tax battle, has been ordered to pay more than
£114 million in unpaid duty to the Zurich authorities.
Schwarzenbach, a former head of UBS’s foreign exchange operations in London who went on to make himself a reputed billionaire with his InterExchange business, is accused of failing to pay taxes due from his art trading business based in Switzerland.
The Zurich authorities claim he was trading art and antiques out of his sprawling Villa Falkenstein, home to his private family office in the city, and failing to declare it.
The tycoon has one of the biggest private art collections in the world and disputes the bill, claiming he is a collector, not a dealer. But a Zurich court upheld the tax authorities’ ruling over the previously unreported dues.
Schwarzenbach is now expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Separately, the Evening Standard has learned that he has resigned as a director of the Guards Polo Club, owner of the Black Bears team and of the company through which he owns his sprawling Culden Faw estate in Berkshire. The estate includes the picturesque village of Hambleden, famed as the backdrop for Midsomer Murders.
He still appears to own the estate through a company in the British Virgin Islands, as well as his Scottish estates, owned through a Panama company set up in 1977.
However, after decades of being based in the UK, he decamped his prime residence to Switzerland earlier this year, sources said.
Schwarzenbach is also fighting two cases with the Swiss customs authorities over millions of swiss francs in art taxes which it claims he owes for importing artworks by masters such as Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani.
A spokesman declined to comment on what he described as ongoing legal cases.
@ArmitageJim