SIX BILLION DOLLARS AND THE SWISS BANKER

A senior Swiss banker who was charged two days ago by United States prosecutors with dispatching bankers to help rich Americans evade taxes also oversaw a covert team in Canada that funnelled as much as $5.6-billion offshore, The Globe and Mail has learned.

Raoul Weil, former head of wealth management for Swiss financial giant UBS, has been accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of equipping a team of bankers with encrypted computers and countersurveillance training in an effort to conceal $20-billion from the Internal Revenue Service.

Internal UBS records, as well as interviews with former UBS officials, show Mr. Weil was in charge of a similar operation in Canada. A team of a dozen or so bankers, known internally in UBS's Zurich and Geneva offices as the “Canada Desk,” made several trips a year to UBS-sponsored events, such as chamber orchestra concerts, and encouraged the country's wealthy elites to move their money to Switzerland.
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No former management executives of UBS's Canadian subsidiary reached by The Globe would speak on the record, but several said there were legitimate reasons why a Canadian would prefer a Swiss UBS banker over someone from the Canadian branches. One former official highlighted the service culture and reputation of Swiss bankers.