Another UBS client gets reduced tax fraud sentence
2009-11-06

Nations U.S. City Fort Lauderdale States Florida Category Regions County Broward County Metropolitan Miami-Fort Lauderdale Event 2009 US Tax Crackdown Company UBS AG Source (Reuters)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (Reuters) - A British-born Florida yacht broker and former client of Swiss bank UBS AG received a reduced, two-month prison sentence for tax fraud on Friday because he cooperated with a U.S. investigation into the bank.

Robert Moran, a 58-year-old U.S. citizen born in Leicester, England, was sentenced by a federal court judge in Fort Lauderdale. The two-month prison term was to be followed by one year of probation.

It was the third case in two weeks in which a former client of UBS was treated with relative leniency because he aided a federal investigation of the Swiss bank and its ties with wealthy Americans, who evaded taxes by hiding money in secret, offshore accounts.

Moran had faced a maximum three-year prison term. Prosecutors, citing his substantial cooperation with U.S. authorities, sought a sentence of no more than seven months.

"The defendant did produce timely, significant and complete assistance to the government," U.S. District Judge James Cohn said in pronouncing sentence.

But sitting in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Judge Cohn added: "I think the public has become weary about people with all the trappings of success deceiving other investors, or in this case, the government".

Moran, a resident of Lighthouse Point, Florida and a citizen since 1994, pleaded guilty in April to using an account at UBS to conceal more than $3 million in assets from the U.S. tax authorities.

His guilty plea was the first by a U.S. client of the Swiss wealth management giant. It was credited by authorities for adding momentum to the U.S. investigation of UBS, which formally ended in August, when the bank agreed to turn over the names of 4,450 wealthy U.S. clients with undisclosed offshore accounts.

(Reporting by Tom Brown; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Leslie Gevirtz)