Mar 7, 2011 12:07 AM GMT+0800
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-06/former-wegelin-banker-held-by-fbi-admitted-to-aiding-tax-evasion.html
A former director of Wegelin & Co AG was held by the FBI in the U.S., where he admitted to money- laundering charges, the Swiss private bank said.
Wegelin spokeswoman Albena Bjoerck confirmed a report in SonntagsZeitung saying the 41-year-old was arrested at Miami airport in October 2010 and later convicted. He returned to Switzerland on Oct. 27 and the bank fired him in late February, the paper said.
“The bank regrets the incident,” Bjoerck told Bloomberg News in an e-mailed statement. “Wegelin is examining the case comprehensively in close cooperation with the authorities.”
The director, who until 2005 headed the Caribbean business of another Swiss bank, was incriminated using camera footage gathered secretly in London by U.K. police and the FBI, the paper said.
Though he knew that travel to the U.S. was risky, the banker was lured there with a promise of “exciting business contacts” by a business partner’s wife who was working with the FBI, the report said.
The banker confirmed the arrest in the newspaper and said his case is now closed, SonntagsZeitung said.