Raoul Weil, once the third most senior executive at UBS, has
been arrested in Italy
based on an Interpol notice sought by US authorities, media reports said.

US
authorities are seeking to extradite Weil from Italy
to face charges of helping US
clients conceal money from US
tax authorities, reports said.

"When
Raoul Weil was indicted in 2008 he was immediately released from all
his duties at the bank. UBS reached a final settlement concerning the US
cross border issue in 2010," the bank told WealthBriefing in a statement today after being asked about the reports.

Weil was indicted in 2008 in a Florida
court on charges that he oversaw the bank’s cross-border business and helped
rich US
clients hide billions in assets. A federal judge later declared Weil a
fugitive. According to the indictment, between 2002 and 2007, he oversaw the
Swiss bank’s cross-border private banking business that provided services to
some 20,000 US
clients who collectively hid about $20 billion in assets.

A report by the Wall Street Journal quoted UBS as saying
that Weil was released from his duties at the bank when he was indicted.

UBS no longer provides offshore banking services to US
clients. In the most high-profile individual banking case yet, the bank paid
$780 million to settle civil charges and handed over names of over 4,400 US taxpayers
to the US authorities. It also transferred some account details in a separate
move to settle criminal charges. The move was seen as a historic breach of
Swiss bank secrecy.

This summer, the US and Swiss governments signed a bilateral
treaty to draw a line under the wrangle over the accounts that Swiss banks had managed.
This agreement is designed to encourage Swiss banks that are not yet under
investigation to disclose US account holders and pay associated penalties.
Depending on the specific details, some banks will be officially given a clean
record while others may have to pay fines. The exact details of how this
US-Swiss pact will operate in practice remain unclear, as WealthBriefing learned recently at a briefing in Zurich from lawyers about the issue.