PARIS: The whistleblower helped the US prosecute Swiss bank UBS AG for aiding tax evasion has won permission to try to do the same thing now in France.
Bradley Birkenfeld, an American who once worked for UBS, is being allowed to travel to Paris between Feb. 24 and March 1 to provide testimony in an ongoing investigation of the Zurich-based bank underway there, according to a court filing on Tuesday. Mr. Birkenfeld, who was implicated in the previous U.S. case against UBS, spent time in prison and now requires court approval to travel overseas as part of his supervised release.
French judges are probing whether UBS solicited clients in France to open Swiss bank accounts in order to hide money. UBS was ordered last year to post a 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) bond in the case, which the bank has called “exaggerated, speculative and not based on facts.”
Last Friday, Mr. Birkenfeld filed a motion for permission to travel to France to aid the investigation underway there, and noted that he’d received a related subpoena on Feb. 3 to appear before French judge Guillaume Daieff, who is leading the effort.
Mr. Birkenfeld noted in his filing last week that the U.S. Justice Department had agreed that he should be allowed to aid the French investigation.
