UBS, the IRS and Phil Gramm (Justice Department file lawsuit against UBS)

[ProSense]

UBS, the IRS and Phil Gramm

by Avenging Angel
Fri Feb 20, 2009 at 01:44:43 PM PST

News that the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Swiss banking giant UBS is just the latest chapter in the curious case of Phil Gramm. Just one day after UBS agreed to pay a $780 million criminal fine and admitted to conspiring to defraud the IRS, the DOJ demanded access to 52,000 accounts as part of its broad tax evasion probe. Which is more than just a little ironic. After all, before he became a UBS vice-chairman in 2002, then Senator Phil Gramm helped lead the 1990's Republican war to gut the Internal Revenue Service.

Gramm's fingerprints, of course, have been all over the financial meltdown and steep downturn gripping the U.S. economy over the past year. In his role as an adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign, Gramm famously decried the "mental recession" and mocked the United States as a "nation of whiners." And the Texas Senator's machinations in the Senate to create the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which helped lead to catastrophic losses at UBS in subprime mortgages during his tenure there.

But it was Gramm's role over 10 years ago in decapitating the IRS' ability to enforce tax laws against wealthiest Americans may well have UBS's schemes possible.

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UPDATE: Almost on cue, Phil Gramm takes to the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal to point the finger of blame elsewhere. (Hat tip to John Minehan.)

[pleah]

1. K&R I hope to hell they nail gramm for something,

anything. I am very curious to know who all is on the list of accounts.

[Andy823]

2. I am with you.

These people need to be taken down! They need to be prosecuted for their crimes, made to pay back their back taxes plus interest, and never be allowed to hold a public office again! I hope they get the names of those who have been hiding their taxes with UBS, and I hope they also go after the rest of the criminals who have been hiding taxes in the other offshore accounts. Think of the money they could put back in the treasury by collecting all the back taxes those criminals have been hiding over the years!

[pleah]

5. Absolutely!

All offshore accounts should be banned and those that are found should be confiscated.

[Ilsa]

3. I think it was the Millionaire Investigations Department of the IRS

that was gutted. I can't imagine Gramm wanting regular people to be free of IRS harassment over a $100 tax filing error.

[indepat]

4. Gramm: certainly one of the most reprehensible critters ever elected to the Senate imv,

not to even mention the extraordinary harm his evil machinations have caused this country. :P