Pourquoi UBS remplace-t-elle le président du conseil d'administration Peter Kurer par Kaspar Villiger, 68 ans, conseiller fédéral à la retraite, après avoir remplacé le CEO Marcel Rohner par Oswald Grübel, ex-boss de Credit Suisse à la retraite?
Ben, parce que Kurt Furgler est mort trop tôt, pardi.
Welcome back Kaspar, l'homme qui pendant des années a bétonné le secret bancaire et la non-coopération internationale en matière d'évasion fiscale, avec son lieutenant Robert Waldburger, aujourd'hui conseiller d'UBS. Que souffle le vent du renouveau!
Comme l'observe un collègue du bureau de Zurich, Kaspar Villiger siège au conseil de Swiss Re, un réassureur qui a pris tous les (mauvais) risques financiers ces dernières années.
Enfin, voici ce que dit le département de justice américain à propos de Peter Kurer. Ce qui explique peut-être son départ:
Justice Dept. chastises UBS chairman over IRS fraud probe By Neil Roland March 3, 2009.
In the most direct evidence yet tying UBS Chairman Peter Kurer to oversight failures at the Swiss bank, Investment News learned today that the U.S. Justice Department recently criticized as inadequate an internal investigation that he supervised. The 2006 investigation focused on whistleblower allegations that bank managers were encouraging breaches of UBS’s own written policies in helping American clients evade federal taxes, prosecutors said in an exhibit accompanying UBS’s settlement of a criminal investigation.
This “limited” 2006 probe “did not examine or follow up on available evidence of private banker communications with U.S. clients,”
according to the Justice Department’s Statement of Facts attached to the settlement.
“As a result, it found only ‘isolated’ instances of non-compliance,”
the six-page document said. “A thorough investigation would have uncovered violations of U.S. law.”
The Justice Department criticism was part of a section titled “inadequate compliance systems.” Mr. Kurer, 59, was UBS’s top lawyer at the time.
“Of the evidence made public, this is the most compelling information yet to suggest that he is at risk of a criminal indictment,” said Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor with Shulman, Rogers in Rockville, Md. “But there are too many factors that play into an indictment to know if there will be one.”
Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor, said the documents “bring home the essential role that Mr. Kurer played in the failures at UBS. Whether he acted negligently or worse in the government’s eyes is still something that has not yet been made clear.”
UBS’s $780 million settlement, which headed off a likely indictment, limits the bank’s exposure to prosecution but not that of its employees. The Internal Revenue Service has filed a separate civil suit seeking to force the company to disclose the identities of U.S.
The Justice Department leveled accusations at UBS and unnamed executives who “occupied positions at the highest levels of management” and were termed “unindicted co-conspirators.”
The Justice Department’s Statement of Facts did not mention Mr. Kurer by name.
But a May 2006 letter from him to the whistleblower, former UBS private banker Bradley Birkenfeld, shows that Kurer oversaw the internal probe.(...)
In another exhibit to last month’s settlement, Justice alleged unnamed UBS executives failed to “implement effective restrictions” after being notified about “unregistered and unlicensed contacts with the United States.”
“The business was too profitable for UBS,” the criminal allegations said. The Justice Department did not make clear the circumstances in which the executives were allegedly told of the illegal activity.
Mr. Kurer also sat on a high-level 2002 corporate committee accused by prosecutors last month of “knowingly” withholding information relating to its obligations to report on American taxpayers’ secret accounts.
The U.S. Justice Department alleged that the 10-member UBS Group Executive Board that ran the bank’s daily business operations contributed to a conspiracy to defraud the United States of tax revenue.
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