U.S. accuses UBS client of tax evasion, more to come

By Pascal Fletcher

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. authorities on Thursday arrested and charged an accountant in Florida in the first of what they said could be a series of tax evasion prosecutions of American clients of Swiss bank UBS AG (UBSN.VX) (UBS.N).

Steven Michael Rubinstein, who worked for a company in the yacht-building business, was accused of filing at least one false tax return that failed to disclose he had an account with UBS or made any money from it , the Justice Department said.

Rubinstein, an American who also had a South African passport, was arrested at his home in Boca Raton, Florida, which the charge against him says he built with the help of funds from his UBS account. A Fort Lauderdale judge ordered him to be detained pending a bond hearing scheduled for next Tuesday.

The criminal complaint filed by Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Special Agent Scott Johnson said Rubinstein's arrest resulted from information provided by UBS to U.S. authorities on the identities and account information of American clients who were using their Swiss bank accounts to evade U.S. taxes.

"Today is the first of the prosecutions resulting from that disclosure, but it will not be the last," Alexander Acosta, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in the statement announcing the charges against Rubinstein.

Rubinstein's lawyer, Miami-based Robert Panoff, was not available for comment.

Acting Assistant Attorney General John A. DiCicco of the Justice Department's Tax Division said his unit was "committed to helping the IRS to ferret out and hold accountable taxpayers who are hiding assets in undisclosed foreign accounts."

Rubinstein was charged only hours after The New York Times reported that the Justice Department had opened about 100 criminal investigations into wealthy American clients of UBS, Switzerland's largest bank.