House Oversight Subcommittee Targets UBS Currency Violations
By Andrew Cochran
The U.S. House International Relations Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has announced additional witnesses for tomorrow's hearing on offshore banking and terrorism (previously noticed on CTB here). It's clear from the witness list that the subcommittee, which conducted a very successful investigation into the Oil-for-Food scandal last year (see the 12/07/05 hearing), wants to pursue currency violations by Swiss-based bank UBS. U.S. dollars supposedly guarded by UBS in a Swiss facility somehow found their way to pre-war Iraq (Saddam stored them in a vault), Cuba, and Iran, in violation of U.S. law. First publicized in 2004, the violations have already resulted in a $100 million fine of UBS, the loss of its privilege to transport U.S. currency overseas, and an embarrassing hearing at the Senate Banking Committee in May 2004, during which the committee chairman referred to UBS employees' acts as "despicable." Last year, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) demanded an investigation and wants the U.S. government to freeze any assets of the Castro regime that may be held by UBS in Zurich. The expanded witness list now includes an assistant prosecutor from New York, UBS's head of compliance for the Americas, and John Moscow, a former (and legendary) prosecutor in Manhattan who led the investigation that resulted in the conviction of Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski. This could be worth watching.
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