The Swiss banking giant UBS was sentenced, Monday, December 13, to a total of 1.8 billion euros in fines for aggravated money laundering of tax fraud and illegal bank directing in France between 2004 and 2012.
This sanction is significantly lower than that pronounced at first instance (4.5 billion euros), because it takes into account the fact that, unlike other tax evasion scandals, no certainty could be evidence concerning the amount of assets evaded. Impossible, therefore, to apply the rule according to which the fine can go up to half of the funds on which the laundering operations relate. Result: a fixed sanction of 3.75 million euros was retained against UBS, while its French subsidiary was sentenced to 1.87 million euros in fine for complicity in illegal bank canvassing.
Faced with the scale of the fraud, the judges, however, confiscated the billion retained by the courts as surety, and added 800 million in damages for the State, thus bringing the total penalties to more than 1.8 billion. euros. This sum remains the largest ever demanded in France against an actor in the financial sector.
This sanction in a tax evasion case, the only one to which UBS is condemned at the end of a lawsuit (the bank had until then negotiated), is however quite weak in view of the penalties that can be imposed on the abroad, in particular in the United States, where the average of the first ten fines issued by financial regulators exceeds 10 billion dollars (approximately 9 billion euros).