UBS Has Four Weeks in June to Fight $5 Billion French Fine
UBS Has Four Weeks in June to Fight $5 Billion French Fine
(Bloomberg) -- UBS Group AG is set for a Paris retrial in June to fight its conviction and record 4.5 billion-euro ($5 billion) fine for helping wealthy French clients stash undeclared funds in offshore accounts.
Judges at the Paris Court of Appeals said on Monday the UBS retrial will run from June 2-29. At the end of the first trial UBS was chastised by a judge for criminal wrongdoings of “an exceptionally serious nature.”
The Swiss lender was convicted in February of laundering customers’ undeclared funds, and dispatching bankers across the border to seek out new clients even though they lacked the paperwork to offer such services in France.
The UBS case is part of a French crackdown on tax fraud and money laundering operated through Switzerland that’s seen the conviction of a former minister and HSBC Holdings Plc pay 300 million euros to settle a case.
Zurich-based UBS has consistently contested any criminal wrongdoing in the case throughout the investigation and during the initial trial.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gaspard Sebag in Paris at gsebag@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, Christopher Elser
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