A Swiss lawyer accused of helping United States clients conceal millions of dollars in offshore accounts pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit tax fraud in federal court in New York on Friday and has been telling prosecutors how he helped American clients use secret accounts to hide assets from the Internal Revenue Service. Edgar Paltzer, 57, admitted Aug. 16 in federal court in New York that he conspired to commit tax fraud by helping U.S. clients hide millions of dollars from the IRS. He was indicted on April 16 with a Swiss banker, Stefan Buck.Paltzer, a former partner of Swiss law firm Niederer Kraft & Frey, was first charged in April on one count of conspiracy alongside Stefan Buck, then head of private banking at Bank Frey & Co AG.

Frey, the bank’s founder, had also been a partner in Niederer Kraft & Frey. But he resigned on April 25, with Niederer Kraft at the time saying it “concluded that it was in the best interests” of the law firm.

The indictment accused Paltzer and Buck of conspiring with U.S. taxpayers from 2000 through at least 2012 to help them hide their Swiss accounts from the Internal Revenue Service.

The case shed light on Bank Frey, one of the smaller Swiss private banks with just 1.9 billion Swiss francs ($1.54 billion) under management last year. Read More