Ex-UBS Client Zaltsberg Admits Hiding $2.6 Million, Failing to Tell IRS
A former UBS AG client who played soccer on the Soviet national team pleaded guilty to failing to tell U.S. tax authorities about $2.6 million held in an offshore account.
Leonid Zaltsberg, 75, admitted that he didn’t declare to the Internal Revenue Service a nominee Panamanian account set up with the help of a UBS banker and a Swiss lawyer he didn’t identify in federal court in Newark, New Jersey.
“Did you seek advice from UBS employees on how to keep your foreign bank account hidden from the IRS?” U.S. District Judge Stanley Chesler asked Zaltsberg, who answered in the affirmative.
UBS, the largest Swiss bank, paid $780 million last year to avoid prosecution, admitted it aided tax evasion from 2000 to 2007, and gave the IRS data on 250 secret accounts, including Zaltsberg’s, court records show. UBS later agreed to reveal data on another 4,450 accounts.
Since the UBS deferred-prosecution agreement, the Justice Department filed criminal tax charges against 16 other UBS clients in the U.S., two UBS bankers, and three others accused of enabling tax evasion. At least 150 other people are being investigated, prosecutors said. Last year, 15,000 Americans sought to avoid prosecution by disclosing offshore accounts.
Soviet Athlete
Zaltsberg was a member of the Soviet Union’s national soccer team in the 1960s and played in the World Cup, according to his daughter, Larisa Beyder, who attended the hearing. He came to the U.S. from Ukraine in 1989 and settled in Milltown, New Jersey, said his attorney, James DiPietro. Zaltsberg, who became a U.S. citizen, was a metals trader from 1990 to 2004, DiPietro said.
Zaltsberg, who is now an adviser to the Ukrainian national soccer team, suffers from bladder and prostate cancer, as well as depression, DiPietro said. He’s also had open-heart surgery and four stents inserted, his daughter said.
Zaltsberg, speaking through an interpreter, admitted that he set up a UBS account in 1993, and that he set up the Panamanian corporation, Belton Capital Corp., in 2000. Zaltsberg said he created Belton to hide his assets from the IRS.
In pleading guilty to filing a false tax return in 2003, Zaltsberg also admitted that he failed to file Reports of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, or FBARs, from 2000 to 2007. He will pay $1.3 million, or a 50 percent FBAR on the highest amount of his account, DiPietro said. The tax loss to the U.S., the lawyer said, was about $60,000.
The case is United States of America v. Leonid Zaltsberg, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey (Newark).
To contact the reporter on this story: David Voreacos in Newark, New Jersey at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net.
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