UBS increased donations to Clinton Foundation after Hillary’s help with IRS
In early 2009 after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state, she met with the Swiss foreign minister in Geneva to discuss the impact of an Internal Revenue Service suit against UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret bank accounts, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The Swiss minister stated that if the IRS case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank could face prosecution on both sides of the Atlantic either by violating Swiss bank secrecy laws by giving the names to US tax authorities, or refusing and facing criminal charges in US federal court.
A few months after the meeting, Clinton had hammered out a tentative settlement; these types of negotiations are not usually handled by the State Department, the Journal said.
As part of the deal, UBS gave up information on 4,450 accounts, or roughly 8.5 percent of the accounts sought by the IRS.
The agreement had some lawmakers criticizing the paltry number of tax violators and looking for a more extensive crackdown.
After the Swiss accord, UBS’s contributions to the Clinton family’s charitable organization increased, according to data compiled by the Journal.
Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according to foundation and bank records.
The Journal said they could find no evidence of any link between Clinton’s involvement in the case and the bank’s donations to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, or its hiring of Mr. Clinton, but questioned her involvement in the UBS matter as an example of how the Clintons’ private and political activities overlap.
UBS denied any connection between the IRS case being resolved favorably and its Clinton Foundation donations.
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