Swiss banks are turning over thousands of employee names to U.S. authorities as they seek leniency for their alleged role in helping American clients evade taxes, according to lawyers representing banking staff.
At least five banks supplied e-mails and telephone records containing as many as 10,000 names to the U.S. Department of Justice , according to estimates by Douglas Hornung, a Geneva- based lawyer ...
HSBC, Credit Suisse sacrifice employees
Now, much speculation has been speculated that Mitt took the 2009 amnesty regarding Swiss banks offered by the IRS, and that's why he can't released any more tax returns. For example, Lawrence O'Donnell, last night.
And now 10,000 ordinary employees have been thrown to the tender mercies of the US DoJ.
"The banks are burning their own people to try and cut deals with the DoJ," said Hornung. "This violation of personal privacy is unprecedented in the Swiss banking industry."
Indeed. In fact, it appears that this release may be illegal under Swiss law - but the banks are pressuring the Swiss regulators to permit it, because otherwise the banks might wind up paying larger fines, and that would hurt the owners and executives.
Now, suppose for a moment that the Romney's had several Swiss accounts, and only came clean on the ones where the IRS knew about it, which were at UBS AG. Now in addition suppose you were a worker bee at USBC, Credit Suisse, or one of the other banks sacrificing worker bees to save drones. Could you save your own bacon by giving Mitt Romney up to the DoJ? Quite possibly.
The other shoe that may be about to drop would be a size 2,500 EEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
If Romney did have accounts at these banks, and didn't take the amnesty, he's screwed, and he knows he's screwed. That could cause exhaustion and erratic, unhinged behavior.
Just a thought.