Juergen Homann, Failing to Report Foreign Bank Accounts, New Jersey 2010

A Saddle River, N.J., man has pleaded guilty to failure to file a Report of Foreign Bank or Financial Accounts (F-BAR). Juergen Homann appeared before Judge Stanley R. Chesler in Newark, N.J., and accepted responsibility for concealing more than $5 million in Swiss bank accounts.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Homann failed to file an F-BAR for calendar year 2007. He also failed to report his account at UBS AG in Switzerland on his individual income tax return for that year. Additionally, Homann failed to report income earned on his UBS bank account.

The UBS account, originally opened in the late 1980s in the name of a Liechtenstein foundation, was transferred into the name of ELM Finance Limited, a nominee Hong Kong corporation. Homann established ELM with the assistance of Swiss lawyer, Matthias Rickenbach, who was indicted in August 2009 for conspiring to defraud the United States.

From 2001 through 2008, Homann held approximately $6.1 million in assets in the ELM account at UBS in Switzerland. In 2005, Homann, with the assistance of Rickenbach and a Swiss banker, conducted a sham loan by transferring $5 million from an account in the name ELM Finance Limited to a second Hong Kong entity in order to obtain financing for Homann’s U.S. business without alerting authorities that he controlled the assets in the ELM at UBS.

Judge Chesler scheduled sentencing for January 6, 2010. Homann faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 or twice the amount of financial gain to the defendant or loss to the IRS. Additionally, Homann has agreed to pay a civil F-BAR penalty based on 50% of the highest balance contained in the UBS account.

“As the IRS voluntary disclosure program enters its final few weeks, those who are hiding income and assets in offshore accounts would be well-advised to promptly come in and come clean before the government learns about their accounts through other channels,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

Juergen Homann, a resident of Saddle River, N.J., was charged with failure to file a Report of Foreign Bank or Financial Accounts (F-BAR) for calendar year 2007. He is set to be sentenced on January 6, 2010.

Related Federal Cases