A German magazine reports that the German Federal Central Tax Office is investigating customers of Leumi Private Bank Switzerland for allegedly not informing it of bank accounts held outside Germany. "Reuters" reports that Bank Leumi (TASE: LUMI) said that it was aware of an investigation being conducted by the German authorities.
In the past few years, since the outbreak of the credit crisis in 2008, there have been several investigations into tax evasion, in view of the huge debts of Western governments, which are campaigning against black capital in order to increase their tax revenues.
According to the German magazine, the German authorities are basing their investigation on data on a CD that the State of North Rhine-Westphalia bought in late 2013 from a foreign party. The tax authorities are targeting several wealthy customers, including one person with $110 million in assets.
The report adds that as part of the investigation, the German authorities have conducted a number of raids, some of them based on information contained on the disk.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 13, 2014
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2014