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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

#Tata in #Africa: pioneer forges ahead | beyondbrics

India, is eyeing Africa – and India’s most prominent industrial house, Tata group, is leading the pack.

Tata in Africa: pioneer forges ahead | beyondbrics


When anyone speaks about investment into Africa, China comes to mind. It’s the familiar and contentious story of a developing power drawn to a resource-rich continent.
But now another growing economy, India, is eyeing Africa – and India’s most prominent industrial house, Tata group, is leading the pack.
Raman Dhawan, managing director of Tata Africa Holdings, the group’s strategic investment arm, tolda media briefing this week that revenues from Africa are expected to grow 30 per cent per year – up from $2.3bn in the 2012 fiscal year.
Tata Group’s activities in Africa are executed both through the subsidiary, which was set up in 1994, and through the individual companies themselves. So, there are several plans for the continent.
For instance, Tata Hotels Resorts and Palaces currently has a 166-room hotel in Cape Town and the Taj Pamodzi Hotel in Zambia with another 193 rooms. Dhawan told reporters on Monday that the hospitality business is looking to expand on the continent: “We are considering proposals from three or four countries. All of these properties may not necessarily be in the luxury segment but they would be appropriate for the African market.”
Likewise, Tata Motors, which was responsible for the group’s first foray into Africa when it entered Zambia in 1977, wants to grow into new African markets. Tata Automobiles Corporation SA currently distributes Tata Motors’ vehicles across the country and certain commercial vehicles are assembled in Pretoria too.
R T Wasan, head of international business for commercial vehicles at Tata Motors, told the briefing on Monday: “We are looking at new assembly operations in Tunisia and Kenya through local partners. We are focusing on small, light and medium commercial vehicles.”
Egypt has cottoned on to the group’s plans and is keen to get in on the action. An Egyptian delegation to India is approaching Tata group on Wednesday, hoping for some investment into its troubled economy. The Egyptian minister of investment, Osama Saleh, told the Economic Times:
We will be meeting senior officials from the Tata Group to discuss investments in both automobiles and hotels segment… We do not have any Indian automobile manufacturer in Egypt…We import two-wheelers from Bajaj Auto… So now we hope to see Tatas manufacturing in Egypt.
So far, the group has invested a total $1.7bn in Africa – including both operational and upcoming projects – and the planned expansion will occur in the power, telecommunications, automotive, mining and hospitality businesses. That sounds like a significant inflow into key sectors for a developing market.
Tata’s plans are just one part of wider cooperation between Africa and India. Indian investment into Africa is now close to $50bn. Anand Sharma, union minister for commerce and industry, this week upped the trade target for Africa to $100bn by 2015. The minister added that India is also studying the possibility of a free trade agreement between India and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the largest economic grouping in the region.
This is just the beginning of an important south-south relationship.
Related reading:
Exxaro, Tata Power team up in Africa, beyondbrics
Africa calling, FT
Africa must get real about Chinese ties, FT

Read the article online here (Registration req'd): Tata in Africa: pioneer forges ahead | beyondbrics

Friday, March 15, 2013

This is what the #mining bust looks like in #Australia

$BHP Billiton Ltd.’s stranded hotel emblem of global mining bust | Mining | News | Financial Post

After $50-billion in writedowns, miners are entering a new era

The legacy of all these writeoffs will be a total rethinking of what mining companies do and how they are valued by the market. Read more
A prefabricated six-story hotel, once destined to house BHP Billiton Ltd. workers, is sitting in 126 boxes stranded on the Melbourne city docks. The stalled project is a sign of the deepening global slowdown in mining.
The contents were to have been assembled 1,990 miles away at Port Hedland, where BHP planned to use the hotel as temporary housing for its estimated US$22 billion harbor expansion to export more iron ore. That was before the world’s biggest mining company scrapped its plan, and the hotel developer went bust.
Global capital spending by mining companies is set to drop by a third next year to US$96 billion, from a record US$141 billion last year, according to UBS AG estimates. Producers have slowed expansions and delayed projects on expectations that commodities prices have passed their highs, after economic growth began slowing in China, the biggest buyer of metals.
“Clearly the rate of new approvals has almost dried up” for mining projects, Michael Elliott, sector leader for Ernst & Young LLP’s global mining practice, said in an interview from Sydney. “A lot of that has been rethinking what rates of return companies now require from these new investments.”
The 117-member Bloomberg World Mining Index has dropped 8.2% this year, with BHP down 3.9%, and is set for its first decline in four quarters. In contrast, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 10% and hit a record this month.

Billionaire’s Caution

Glencore International Plc’s billionaire Chief Executive Officer Ivan Glasenberg last month called for the big miners to stop building new mines and blamed their outgoing leadership for swamping the industry with new output and failing to get returns for shareholders.
The chief executive officers of BHP, which put US$68 billion of projects on hold last year, Rio Tinto Group and Anglo American Plc have quit or announced plans to leave after investors balked at multibillion dollar project writedowns.
“I’m less confident in the mining sector opening their pockets, particularly given the CEO statements that we’ve seen across the board and the outlook in commodity prices,” Richard Leupen, chief executive officer of Sydney-based engineering contractor UGL Ltd. whose clients include BHP, Rio and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, said on a conference call last month. Cost cutting is “endemic in the sector,” he said.
BHP in August mothballed its expansion at Port Hedland, already the world’s biggest bulk export terminal. Melbourne- based BHP appointed Ernst & Young as receivers in November to recover A$50 million (US$51 million) it had advanced to Port Village Accommodation Pty., the hotel developer now in receivership. BHP said in an e-mail that the receiver has sought restructuring proposals from third parties.

Salvaging Hotel Project

Hickory Group, the building contractor, is in talks with various groups, including in Port Hedland, to buy the completed first stage of the steel, aluminum and glass hotel, Michael Argyrou, managing director of the Melbourne-based company, said in an interview. The parties were “serious” and Hickory is hoping to complete a deal within the next few months, he said.
“The plan was to have Hickory send our people up there to put together the parts like in Lego to create the hotel,” Argyrou said. “They’re still sitting at the docks.”
Megan Ball, a spokeswoman for Ernst & Young, declined to comment on Port Village Accommodation as the company is still in receivership. KPMG LLP, the administrator appointed by Port Village, also declined to comment.
An expected slowdown in demand for minerals over the next five years makes cutting costs and boosting productivity a priority, Andrew Mackenzie, the incoming CEO of BHP, said last month in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Peak Prices

Marius Kloppers, whom he will succeed in the top job on May 10, said Feb. 20 there won’t be a return to the peak commodity prices of 2007.
Eleanor Nichols, a Melbourne-based spokeswoman for BHP, declined to comment on BHP’s project deferrals, and referred to Kloppers’ October speech at the Brisbane mining club where he noted supply catching up with increased demand levels to produce “more moderated pricing.”
In the past decade, companies built and expanded mines, port and rail after struggling to feed unprecedented demand growth from China. This prompted the Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index of 24 raw materials to increase almost fourfold since 2001.
The building spree is still being played out. Xstrata Plc, the world’s fourth-largest nickel producer, is completing the US$5 billion Koniambo project in New Caledonia, Rio is due this year to start the US$6.6 billion Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine in Mongolia and Anglo American Plc is building the US$8.8 billion Minas-Rio iron-ore project in Brazil. Francis de Rosa, a spokesman for Xstrata’s coal unit, declined to comment on project plans, as did Rio Tinto spokesman Bruce Tobin.

Bull Time

“During the bull time of the cycle the big miners were throwing everything at everything,” Joel Crane, a Melbourne- based commodity analyst with Morgan Stanley, said by phone. If new projects are shelved “that may lessen the severity of the very steep decline in prices most analysts have in their forecasts,” he said.
Investors cut wagers on a rally for commodities to a four- year low in the week ended March 5 on signs of surplus supply and concern demand from China is slowing. The four-year commodity rally to Dec. 31 led to record prices for everything from gold to copper. Gold prices probably peaked in 2011, Credit Suisse said last month in a report, while Citigroup Global Markets Ltd. in a January report cut its price forecasts for coal and nickel.

Mothballing Projects

The price of iron ore probably peaked at about US$159 a metric ton last month and will average US$129 over the rest of the year, according to a Morgan Stanley report this month. It closed Tuesday at US$143.40 a ton. Citigroup Inc. in January lowered its forecast for nickel prices this year to US$19,890 a ton, from US$21,770 a ton.
“We expect our super-cycle sunset thesis to continue to play out in 2013,” Citigroup analysts Heath Jansen and Jon Bergtheil said in the report. China was becoming a “far less commodity intensive economy” just as a number of projects were set to deliver first production this year, they said.
The super-cycle hasn’t ended, according to New York-based hedge fund Galtere Ltd., whose founder chief investment officer Renee Haugerud said in December that global supplies are at 20- to 40-year lows as growing populations and urbanization in emerging markets will fuel raw-material demand. Still, he added that agricultural goods will outperform basic materials.
Further suspension and mothballing of projects may occur in sectors such as nickel, coal, aluminum and alumina, said Morgan Stanley’s Crane. They also may extend into iron ore, though “you’ll probably see less cancellations in copper.”

High Costs

“There may be a lull in terms of new capacity put on line from around 2015 onwards,” Christian Lelong, a Sydney-based commodities analyst with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said by phone. “That could help to tighten the market at that point. So if you’re looking for some upside caused by project deferrals I would probably flag met coal, but you will not see it for the next couple of years.”
BHP’s “very high-cost” Daunia and Caval Ridge coking coal projects in Australia’s Bowen Basin will probably be delayed, while Xstrata was unlikely to develop the A$6 billion Wandoan thermal coal project, said Sydney-based UBS analyst Tom Price.
Vale, BHP and Rio, which together control about two-thirds of seaborne iron ore supply, still are spending about US$47 billion on new and bigger iron ore mines from Brazil to Australia. The introduction of new supply has prompted Deutsche Bank AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to predict a second-half slump in prices. Vale and Rio are unlikely to develop anytime soon their separate ore projects in Guinea, estimated to cost a total of more than US$20 billion, Price said.
Bloomberg.com

BHP Billiton Ltd.’s stranded hotel emblem of global mining bust | Mining | News | Financial Post

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Puerto Rico Beyond IRS Reach Woos Paulson-Sized Fortunes - Bloomberg

Now this just may work! As long as too many Americans don't come!

Puerto Rico Beyond IRS Reach Woos Paulson-Sized Fortunes - Bloomberg


Puerto Rico occupies a space between foreign and domestic status with U.S. citizenship for residents, its own Olympic team and a tax system that allows individuals and companies the chance to elude the IRS.
The U.S. territory’s leaders are seeking to lure mainland residents such as hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson. Moving to Puerto Rico could allow Paulson and other top-earning taxpayers to shield future income from the Internal Revenue Service without giving up their passports.
Puerto Rico, eager for economic growth, is making an unusually direct pitch to wealthy Americans that risks a political backlash from Congress, said John Buckley, a former tax counsel for Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.
“They’re walking a fine line,” Buckley said. “This would be the first time that Puerto Rico would kind of deliberately erode the U.S. tax base for individuals.”
Already, 10 Americans have taken advantage of a year-old Puerto Rico law that lets them avoid local and U.S. capital gains taxes by signing agreements with the territory’s government. Paulson, a 57-year-old New Yorker, is considering such a move, according to four people who have spoken with him about it, Bloomberg News reported March 11.
The law was designed to promote investment in the island territory. The unemployment rate there was 14 percent in December 2012, compared with 10.2 percent in Nevada and Rhode Island, the states with the highest unemployment, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Puerto Rico’s gross domestic product per capita in 2010 was $16,300, about the same as Botswana or Belarus, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Lost Manufacturing

Puerto Rico wants to diversify its economy, which has lost some of its manufacturing base to low-wage countries such as the Dominican Republic and China, said Gabriel Hernandez, one of the framers of the Puerto Rican tax law and head of the tax division of BDO Puerto Rico PSC.
“It’s our reaction to what happened, that the world got more connected,” said Hernandez, who likened the effort to tax incentives used by states to lure businesses.
The U.S., he said, should embrace “the whole concept of trying to make our economy more independent or more stable or more self-reliant.”
The law takes advantage of the longstanding interaction between the tax codes of the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Under laws previously passed by Congress, all income earned in Puerto Rico by island residents is exempt from U.S. taxation. Residents still owe the IRS taxes on any U.S. income.

Untaxed Income

By moving to Puerto Rico, wealthy Americans can transform potential U.S. capital gains income taxed at up to 23.8 percent into untaxed Puerto Rican income. They must meet residency tests, including spending 183 days a year in Puerto Rico and having social and personal connections on the island.
By contrast, renouncing U.S. citizenship by moving to another country is much more punitive for wealthy taxpayers. They must surrender their U.S. passports and pay an exit tax on the value of unrealized capital gains. As a simplified example, someone giving up citizenship who has $100 million in untaxed stock gains could pay $23.8 million upon departure.
Even with potential tax advantages, Paulson and others considering a move to Puerto Rico should be wary, said Argeo Quinones Perez, a professor of economics at the University of Puerto Rico’s Rio Piedras campus.

‘Third-World Environment’

“For people as wealthy as Mr. Paulson and the like, spending half a year in this provincial, third-world environment would be like spending half a year in minimum-security prison,” he said in an e-mail. “The tax breaks Mr. Paulson and other people and entities enjoy in this fiscal paradise are at the heart of the long-term fiscal crisis and economic stagnation we suffer.”
Puerto Rico, which has a population of about 4 million and is smaller geographically than Connecticut, has been a part of the U.S. since the Spanish-American War in 1898. The commonwealth has a non-voting resident commissioner, Pedro Pierluisi, who represents residents in Congress and caucuses with House Democrats.
In an interview yesterday, Pierluisi blamed Puerto Rico’s unresolved status between statehood and independence. As a state, he said, Puerto Rico would get more federal funding, which would be an acceptable tradeoff for bringing residents’ income under the federal income tax. Residents and employers do pay federal payroll taxes.

Mirror Code

“Short of statehood, this is what you do,” he said, adding that a struggling Puerto Rico economy just encourages migration in the opposite direction, to Florida, Texas and North and South Carolina.
Puerto Rico’s separate tax system makes it different from several other U.S. territories. Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands all use what is called a “mirror code,” in which they use the U.S. tax code and substitute the name of the territory each time the law says United States. The District of Columbia is treated generally like a state for tax purposes.
The Virgin Islands attempted to lure hedge-fund managers more than a decade ago, using authority Congress granted the territory to encourage economic development.
That effort fizzled after Congress changed the law in 2004 to make it more difficult to recharacterize U.S. income as island-based, and the IRS began auditing more aggressively.

Harmonizing Rules

Puerto Rico’s attempts to lure U.S. taxpayers could draw more scrutiny of taxation in the territories, which hasn’t received much attention lately, said Senator Charles Grassley, former chairman of the Finance Committee, who led the effort against the Virgin Islands maneuvers.
“Harmonizing the tax rules of the territories could be something to look at if Congress and the president undertake comprehensive tax reform,” the Iowa Republican said in an e- mailed statement this week. “Or if Puerto Rico maintains a separate tax system, that could be conditioned on accepting certain rules to prevent tax evasion.”
The hybrid system of Puerto Rican taxation has implications for companies, too. Until 2006, the U.S. offered companies a credit against U.S. income taxes for investments in the territories. Companies also have access to the U.S. market, patent protection and the U.S. legal system, Hernandez said.
After that break expired, companies restructured their Puerto Rican operations to take advantage of the fact that it’s considered a foreign jurisdiction for tax purposes.
Companies such as Amgen Inc., Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and Microsoft Corp. receive local tax benefits from their operations on the island, according to regulatory filings. As with profits in another country, the companies can earn and leave money in Puerto Rico without paying U.S. corporate income taxes.
“The same thing that Paulson is getting, corporations are getting in the manufacturing sector,” Pierluisi said.
At a hearing last year, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said Microsoft’s method of routing profits through Puerto Rico saved the company $4.5 billion over three years.
Bill Sample, the company’s corporate vice president for worldwide tax, testified at the hearing that Microsoft follows all tax laws.
For U.S. lawmakers concerned about the budget deficit, the Puerto Rico law could be a boon, said Buckley, who now teaches tax law at Georgetown University in Washington. A legislative attempt to prevent Paulson and others from tax-free moves to Puerto Rico could generate revenue for the U.S. Treasury.
“You could get a score here,” Buckley said, “And I doubt a lot of people are going to stand up and defend him.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Rubin in Washington at rrubin12@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jodi Schneider at jschneider50@bloomberg.net

Read the article online here:  
Puerto Rico Beyond IRS Reach Woos Paulson-Sized Fortunes - Bloomberg

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

U.S. Tax Cheats Picked Off After Adviser Mails It In - Bloomberg

What a Moron!

Singenberger inadvertently mailed a list of his U.S. clients, including their names and incriminating details, which somehow wound up in the hands of federal authorities

 

U.S. Tax Cheats Picked Off After Adviser Mails It In - Bloomberg


Everybody knows the danger of sending things inadvertently in an e-mail. Beda Singenberger’s case shows you also have to be pretty careful when you mail things the old-fashioned way.
Over an 11-year period, federal prosecutors charge, Swiss financial adviser Singenberger helped 60 people in the U.S. hide $184 million in secret offshore accounts bearing colorful names like Real Cool Investments Ltd. and Wanderlust Foundation.
Wegelin & Co. pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in January to conspiring to help hide more than $1.2 billion in assets from the IRS, while opening undeclared accounts for at least 70 U.S. taxpayers who were former UBS clients. Source: Wegelin & Co. via Bloomberg

Then, according to a prosecutor, Singenberger inadvertently mailed a list of his U.S. clients, including their names and incriminating details, which somehow wound up in the hands of federal authorities.
Whoops!

Now, U.S. authorities appear to be picking off the clients on that list one by one. Singenberger’s goof has already ensnared Jacques Wajsfelner, an 83-year-old exile from Nazi Germany, and Michael Canale, a retired U.S. Army surgeon, court records show. Another customer, cancer researcher Michael Reiss, pleaded guilty, though his court records don’t mention the list.
“He was sending mail to someone in the United States, and apparently in error he included a list of U.S. taxpayers,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Levy said on March 5 at the sentencing in New York of Wajsfelner. “The government has mined that list to great effect and prosecuted a number of people who were on that list.”
Wajsfelner, who pleaded guilty to hiding $5.7 million from the Internal Revenue Service, was sentenced to three months of house arrest.

The Lesson

Aside from Singenberger’s snail-mail gaffe, the case shows how offshore accounts are used not just by the megarich but also by the merely wealthy. It’s also further evidence that the government is continuing its aggressive assault on taxpayers who use offshore accounts to avoid taxes.
Since 2008, U.S. prosecutors charged at least 86 people in their crackdown on offshore tax evasion, including two dozen bankers, lawyers and advisers like Singenberger. Another 38,000 Americans avoided prosecution through an IRS amnesty program that let them repatriate their accounts by paying back taxes and penalties and disclosing their offshore accounts and bankers.
The major crack in Swiss bank secrecy opened in February 2009, when prosecutors charged UBS AG (UBSN) with conspiring to cheat the IRS. UBS, the largest Swiss bank, avoided prosecution by paying $780 million, admitting it fostered tax evasion and handing over data on thousands of clients.
Singenberger, who lives in Zurich, was charged in New York federal court in July 2011 with conspiracy to cheat the IRS.

Sinco Treuhand

He ran Zurich-based Sinco Treuhand AG, a wealth management and tax-advisory business. Like other offshore bankers charged by the Justice Department, Singenberger is accused of managing, opening and transferring accounts for his U.S. clients. He visited his clients in the U.S., delivering cash from their undeclared accounts or taking cash back to deposit in Switzerland, court records show.
One New York client who banked with UBS for a half-century once had a $74 million account, while a California client of UBS had a $47 million account, prosecutors said.
Most Swiss banks promised the IRS in 2001 that they would obtain documents on the real owners of accounts and would withhold taxes on some transactions. The Justice Department has charged advisers like Singenberger with defeating the purpose of that agreement by hiding the true identities of account owners.
Singenberger created sham foundations in Liechtenstein and phony corporations in Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands to help clients hide their ownership of the accounts, prosecutors charged. The accounts had names like Lucky Overseas Ventures Ltd. and Ample Lion Ltd.

Two Sets

Prosecutors said Singenberger prepared one set of IRS forms for the banks that falsely said the foundations or corporations were the real owners and another set of forms required by Swiss law that truthfully said his clients were the actual owners.
After the UBS investigation became public in 2008, he helped clients move accounts to other Swiss banks to keep them under wraps, prosecutors said. Those banks included Wegelin & Co., the oldest Swiss private bank.
Wegelin pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in January to conspiring to help hide more than $1.2 billion in assets from the IRS, while opening undeclared accounts for at least 70 U.S. taxpayers who were former UBS clients. The bank, which paid $74 million to resolve the investigation, closed its doors after 272 years.
Some of Singenberger’s actions are described in the U.S. indictment of Hans Thomann, a UBS client adviser from 1993 to 2003, who later worked for Swiss asset-management firms. Thomann travelled often to New York to deliver cash to or accept cash from one client, according to his indictment.

The Introduction

At one meeting, Thomann recommended that a client meet Singenberger.
“A few moments later, Singenberger appeared at the room in which Thomann was staying at the Manhattan hotel,” according to the indictment. Thomann said he and his UBS colleagues “recommended to U.S. taxpayers who had undeclared accounts at UBS that they use the services of Singenberger.”
The client later flew to Zurich, where Singenberger set up a second UBS account under the name of a British Virgin Islands corporation, according to the indictment.
Thomann was charged with conspiracy in March 2012 in federal court in New York. He hasn’t answered the charge in court. He couldn’t be reached for comment.
Both Thomann and Singenberger helped Canale, the retired Army surgeon, according to Canale’s charging document, known as a criminal information.

Inherited Account

Thomann had handled the account of a relative who died in 2000, leaving the money to Canale. Thomann introduced Canale to Singenberger to set up a structure that “would, to the greatest extent possible, obscure from the IRS” his ownership of his undeclared account, according to the information.
Singenberger set up a Liechtenstein foundation for Canale, and helped him open an account at Wegelin, prosecutors said. By 2009, the account had grown to $1.5 million.
Canale, 62, is a Bronze Star recipient who worked for the Army as a field surgeon during Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, according to one of his lawyers, Martin Press. He also was a surgeon in Macedonia and Kosovo, Press said.
It is not clear from court records how Singenberger’s wayward mail enclosure -- which included such client details as their residences, their Swiss banks, and the ways they hid accounts from the IRS -- found its way to prosecutors.
Canale, who pleaded guilty Dec. 21 in New York, was surprised to learn of the existence of the Singenberger list, said his other attorney, Robert Fink.

A Surprise

Wajsfelner only learned at his March 5 sentencing that he came to the government’s attention through the misdirected list, according to his lawyer, Jeffrey Denner.
“That was definitely news to me and my client,” he said. “Beda Singenberger, to my understanding, is a figure who’s certainly put a lot of people in the frying pan. I don’t think a lot of people recognized they were so close to the fire.”
Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in New York, declined to comment.
Nothing prevents the government from using evidence that it obtains accidentally, said Jeffrey Neiman, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the UBS case.
“It proves that no matter how hard clients try to conceal assets overseas, darn human error can always get in the way,” he said.
Canale, who was also a paratrooper, worked for the Veteran’s Administration from 2010 until retiring last year, Press said.

’Very Sad’

“It’s very sad,” said Fink. “It was an account that he inherited. He never wanted to do anything with it. It’s the most sympathetic case I’ve ever seen. It’s a disaster based on a misfortune that he did not deserve. If anyone deserve leniency, he does.”
Canale pleaded guilty to failing to declare his account on tax returns, and failing to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts with the Treasury Department. He will be sentenced in federal court in New York next month, Press said.
Singenberger has not made an appearance in U.S. court and didn’t respond to a phone call and an e-mail seeking comment. Switzerland does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S.
To contact the reporters on this story: David Voreacos in Newark, New Jersey at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net; Patricia Hurtado in New York at pathurtado@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net

Read the whoole story online here:
 
U.S. Tax Cheats Picked Off After Adviser Mails It In - Bloomberg