A Brazilian-American businessman who lives in Florida was charged with using Credit Suisse Group AG, UBS Group AG and other Swiss banks to hide more than $20 million in assets from U.S. tax authorities over 35 years.
Dan Rotta, 78, was arrested March 9 at Miami International Airport as he was preparing to fly to Barcelona, according to people familiar with the matter. He appeared Monday in Miami federal court, where a magistrate judge said he should remain in jail until a hearing Tuesday, according to court officials.
The Justice Department is trying to determine whether Credit Suisse breached a 2014 plea agreement in which it paid $2.6 billion and admitted helping thousands of Americans evade taxes. Rotta hid assets from the IRS in two dozen secret bank accounts between 1985 and 2020, the Justice Department said in a statement.
"Over the years, Rotta allegedly earned substantial income from these assets that he did not report on his tax returns," the Justice Department said.
An attorney for Rotta declined to comment. Rotta, who lives in Fisher Island, Florida, was charged with conspiring to defraud the U.S. and making a false statement to the Internal Revenue Service. He faces as many as five years in prison on each count.
A spokesperson for UBS, which now owns Credit Suisse, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a regulatory filing last month, UBS said: "Credit Suisse AG has provided information to U.S. authorities regarding potentially undeclared U.S. assets held by clients at Credit Suisse AG since the May 2014 plea. Credit Suisse AG continues to cooperate with the authorities."
Bloomberg News
After public reports surfaced in 2008 that UBS was under investigation for helping U.S. taxpayers evade taxes, Rotta "allegedly took steps to continue concealing his offshore assets, including by closing his UBS account and moving the funds to Credit Suisse and another Swiss bank," the U.S. said Monday. He later moved the money into Swiss bank accounts in the name of other people, prosecutors said.
The IRS began auditing Rotta in 2011 after obtaining evidence that he had unreported foreign financial accounts, and he falsely denied owning them, the Justice Department said. Rotta claimed that hundreds of thousands of dollars in transfers from foreign accounts were non-taxable loans, and enlisted a cousin from Brazil to tell the IRS he made or facilitated the fake loans, the U.S. said.
After the IRS assessed additional taxes and penalties against Rotta, he petitioned the U.S. Tax Court and denied having any foreign accounts. The cousin came to the U.S. to "retell the false loan story to IRS attorneys," the U.S. said.
In 2019, Rotta tried to avoid prosecution by disclosing Swiss accounts through a voluntary disclosure program, but made several false statements, according to the Justice Department.
