(Bloomberg) - A Swiss banker pleaded guilty to fraud for helping an unnamed hedge fund manager and other US taxpayers hide $60 million in assets.
Daniel Walchli, who was a member of the executive board of Zurich’s IHAG Holding AG, which owns Privatbank IHAG, entered his plea Thursday to a single count of conspiracy to defraud the US. The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, but Manhattan federal prosecutors agreed not to seek a punishment outside of 24-to-30 months.
Walchli, 55, was charged in 2021 along with two IHAG bankers, as well as Swiss financial firm Allied Finance Trust AG and two of its executives.
According to prosecutors, the bankers approached a handful of high-net-worth US clients and offered to conceal their assets through a scheme they called the “Singapore Solution.” The clients’ assets were transferred to accounts in other jurisdictions, then repatriated to Switzerland in newly opened accounts nominally held by a Singapore-based asset management firm.
Most of the hidden assets that were cited in the case belonged to an Manhattan hedge fund manager identified in the indictment only as “Client-1.”
One of the other taxpayers, Wayne Franklyn Chinn, pleaded guilty in San Francisco federal court in 2019 to participating in the scheme. Chinn agreed to turn over $2.2 million.
The case is US v. Bechtiger, 20-cr-497, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
(Corrects Walchli’s title in second paragraph and number of defendants in third paragraph.)
By Chris Dolmetsch
