Amir Zavieh, a naturalized citizen and resident of San Francisco, has been indicted in the Southern District of Florida. The indictment is here and the DOJ press release is here. I have only been able to review the indictment lightly, but I do note that Renzo Gadola, a former Swiss banker cooperating with the Government plays a prominent role as an alleged co-conspirator. For prior blogs on Gadola, see here. It is payback time for DOJ's generosity to Gadola! And Gadola's former sidekick, Martin Lack, is involved as well, also named an alleged co-conspirator. Lack is or was a Swiss banker who was indicted in August. See my prior blog, New Swiss Enabler Indictment (8/2/11), here. Last I heard, Lack is on the lam and likely to remain so.
It is a familiar pattern of skulduggery and trying to avoid detection. For those with time on their hands, the alleged Overt Acts of the conspiray may be a good cure for insomnia (alright it is interesting to some tax crime afficionados).
I will post later any items I feel worthy of particular note:
Taxpayer: Amir Zavieh
Bank : UBS and "Cantonal Bank" (a pseudonym)
Counts: Conspiracy (1 count)
Entities: ?
Maximum incarceration period: 60 months
Tax Loss: ?
Court: SD FL
Judge: Donald M. Middlebrooks
My speculation -- with only a single count conspiracy, one of two things will happen -- (i) the defendant will (or perhaps already has) entered a plea agreement to the one count or (ii) a superseding indictment will be filed. Just idle speculation. Surely, unless there are more bad facts that alleged, the defendant's actual sentence will not exceed 60 months, so piling on counts may not be a high priority other than to make a point.
Rumor has it that a Federal Public Defendant was appointed for the hapless Mr. Zavieh; it seems he claims the money isn't his and he can't fund his own defense. Federal Public Defenders are great attorneys and public servants. I am sure they will exploit that defense to the full extent of its merits.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
1 comment:
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The whole indictment did not mention how much tax he had evaded, and how much money he had been hiding. The evidence of wilfulness is overwhelming (phone record, email/fax exchange etc).
ReplyDeleteThe amount money he had wired back to US through an entity seemed very little, less than Mitt Romney's bet -:)
It would be interesting to know these two numbers, the amount tax evaded, and the peak of the total offshore balance.