Ex-Credit Suisse Banker Bachmann Set to Plead Guilty in Virginia

A former banker at a Credit Suisse Group unit facing a July 2011 indictment on a tax conspiracy charge is scheduled to plead guilty today in federal court in Virginia, according to court records.

Andreas Bachmann, a Swiss citizen, was arrested yesterday and appeared in court in Alexandria, where a magistrate released him on bail. Bachmann and six other bankers at Zurich-based  Credit Suisse, the second-largest Swiss bank, are charged in the indictment with conspiring to help U.S. clients hide $4 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service.

Credit Suisse is the largest of 14 Swiss banks under criminal investigation for helping Americans cheat the IRS. Bachmann’s plea follows a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which said  Credit Suisse helped 22,000 Americans hide as much as $10 billion from the IRS.

Chief Executive Officer Brady Dougan apologized in testimony to the subcommittee on Feb. 26, saying a small group of Swiss-based bankers appear to have broken U.S. law and fooled top managers. Dougan admitted to the panel that bankers worked with outside intermediaries to help U.S. clients set up offshore shell entities with money deposited at  Credit Suisse in the names of the entities rather than the clients. Such conduct, Dougan said, was egregious.

UNLICENSED, UNUREGISTERED

Bachmann was “a private banker and asset manager who provided unlicensed and unregistered banking services and investment advice to U.S. customers who maintained undeclared accounts at banks in Switzerland,” according to the indictment.

Bachmann worked from “in or around the 1990s to in or around 2007” at a wholly owned subsidiary of the bank, according to the indictment. From 2007 to 2009, he worked for a Zurich-based asset management firm, then joined several other partners in July 2009 to form another asset management firm in Zurich, according to the indictment.

His attorney, Heather Martin, declined to comment on the case.

Calvin Mitchell, a  Credit Suisse spokesman, said in an e- mail that Bachmann was an employee of  Credit Suisse Fides until 2006. Mitchell declined to comment further.

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