Philosophically, I don’t think tax evasion is a crime. Nevertheless, this story shows the state of our justice department.
Bradley Birkenfeld, former banker for Swiss giant UBS, blew the whistle on the largest tax-evasion scheme in American’s long U.S. history of people think others should pay for their government programs.
Rather than praising Birkenfeld, the Justice Department gave him a 40-month prison sentence.
However his former colleagues at UBS and thousands of rich American clients that hid away billions of dollars for decades in the Swiss Bank UBS seem to have gotten the opposite treatment.
In fact, the Justice Department let them buy their way out of jail.
UBS pled guilty and paid a $780 million fine, while thousands of U.S. citizens with undisclosed offshore accounts where permitted to belatedly disclose them and pay civil fees and penalties.
Only Birkenfeld, the 44-year-old whistleblower, landed in jail, this is another examples of injustice and hypocrisy in the Obama administration, and if Obama having upwards of 30 former employees of Goldman Sachs and its subsidiaries in his cabinet did not prove our government is controlled by bankers this does.
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Correction. This was done by the Bush Department of Justice. The Bush DOJ targeted the UBS Whistleblower, Bradley Birkenfeld, after they realized that his revelations threatened some of the most powerful Republicans in the country, including two Republican candidates for President of the United States. The investigation was politically corrupted before Obama even came into office. This story has not yet been told but it will be.
Thanks for the correction! (Though isn’t it being prosecuted today by the Obama justice department?)