The Justice Department is investigating [1] banks UBS, Credit Suisse and HSBC. There is a separate investigation [2] involving Deutsche Bank, which got wrapped up in a tax shelter scheme orchestrated by a then-employee of Bank One, which was later acquired by JP Morgan Chase. That scheme was called Homer and is estimated to have cost taxpayers [3] about $100 million.

Investigators probing how Treasury regulators allowed a bank to falsify financial records hiding its ill health have found at least three other instances of similar apparent fraud, sources tell ABC News.

In at least one instance, investigators say, banking regulators actually approached the bank with the suggestion of falsifying deposit dates to satisfy banking rules -- even if it disguised the bank's health to the public.

Treasury Department Inspector General Eric Thorson announced in November his office would probe how a Savings and Loan overseer allowed the IndyMac bank to essentially cook its books, making it appear in government filings that the bank had more deposits than it really did. But Thorson's aides now say IndyMac wasn't the only institution to get such cozy assistance from the official who should have been the cop on the beat.

The federal government took over IndyMac in July, after the bank's stock price plummeted to just pennies a share when it was revealed the bank had financial troubles due to defaulted mortgages and subprime loans, costing taxpayers over $9 billion.

William B. Harrison Jr., Chairman of the Board, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., USA: The bank provided Enron with an abusive tax shelter known as Slapshot designed to "save" Enron more $120 million in taxes and earn the bank $5 million in fees. The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in 2002 that Slapshot relied on a phony $1 billion loan arranged and financed by J.P. Morgan Chase and concealed within a complex collection of loans, stock swaps, and structured finance transactions designed to prevent tax authorities from finding out what was going on. The subcommittee had to subpoena hundreds of boxes of documents, read thousands of emails, conduct numerous interviews, and spend months unraveling how that tax shelter worked.

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Bankers at WEF bite their tongues concerning tax evasion  (28.01.06)
The Tax Justice Network was not invited to attend the World Economic Forum, and our request for credentials was denied. I wondered why, since the issue we raise - corporate tax evasion - is of great interest to WEF's main audience, corporate CEOs. I imagined what I might say to those CEOs if I was given a badge and bumped into them in hallways and cocktail parties. It's always better if you know some specifics about a company, so I did a little research, focusing on the prominent bankers which WEF says are here this year. And then I realized why the Tax Justice Network wasn't invited. There are some things the bankers at WEF don't want to talk about.

Charles Prince, Chief Executive Officer, Citigroup, USA: Citigroup is winner of this year's Public Eye on Davos award, nominated by TJN for excelling in socially irresponsible behavior by engaging in tax evasion and facilitating tax evasion by its clients. A report, "Citigroup: a culture and history of tax evasion," is at www.taxjustice.net. It details the European Parking Scandal of 1975-1980; laundering money for Pinochet; the use of private banking accounts to hide and launder the money of Raúl Salinas, brother of the former Mexican president; Gabon dictator Omar Bongo; the sons of the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and others; the Argentine offshore bank scam of the 1990s, plus a secret videotape wherein a Buenos Aires Citibanker offers to launder a "businessman's" profits. And more. Mr. Prince was invited but chose not to accept his award in person.

He had a lot of competition among bankers at WEF for the prize. For example:

William B. Harrison Jr., Chairman of the Board, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., USA: The bank provided Enron with an abusive tax shelter known as Slapshot designed to "save" Enron more $120 million in taxes and earn the bank $5 million in fees. The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in 2002 that Slapshot relied on a phony $1 billion loan arranged and financed by J.P. Morgan Chase and concealed within a complex collection of loans, stock swaps, and structured finance transactions designed to prevent tax authorities from finding out what was going on. The subcommittee had to subpoena hundreds of boxes of documents, read thousands of emails, conduct numerous interviews, and spend months unraveling how that tax shelter worked.

Oswald J. Grebel, Chief Executive Officer, and Walter B. Kielholz, Chairman of the Board, Credit Suisse, Switzerland: A Credit Suisse subsidiary, Banque Leu in Geneva, was used by the clique of Mikhail Khodorkovsy, the convicted Russian tax cheat, to move hundreds of millions of dollars in money skimmed from his companies through transfer pricing as well as to facilitate insider trading in Yukos and other Russian stocks through shell companies in the Channel Islands and elsewhere. According to Elena Collongues-Popova, who was working for Khodorkovsky associate Alexei Golubovich, "More than $300 million was forwarded by various Golubovich-connected shell companies to the Swiss [Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas] bank accounts in 1998."

Credit Suisse was condemned by the country's banking commission for accepting in its Private Bank $214 million in suspect funds from the family of Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. Credit Suisse, of course, is famous for protecting the loot of dictators, among them Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. According to Marie-Gabrielle Koller, a former attorney with accounting firm KPMG in Zurich, after Marcos was overthrown in 1986, KPMG secretly transferred $400 million from Credit Suisse Zurich to a Liechtenstein trust on the ex-dictator's behalf. The money has never been found.

Marcel Ospel Chairman, UBS AG, Switzerland: UBS runs the world's largest private bank, catering to the super-rich. UBS in 1997 and 1998 provided credit lines totaling several billion Swiss francs for 100 to 150 abusive tax shelters sold to KPMG clients according to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It found UBS documentation that repeatedly described the transactions as motivated by tax considerations. One, entitled "U.S. Capital Loss Scheme - UBS `redemption trades,' said: "The essence of the UBS redemption trade is the creation of a capital loss for U.S. tax purposes which may be used by a U.S. tax resident to off-set any capital gains tax liability to which it would otherwise be subject." the UBS document explains the "Economic Rationale" for redemption transactions to be: "Tax benefit for client," Another UBS document states: "The motivation for this structure is tax optimization for U.S. tax residents who are enjoying capital gains that are subject to U.S. tax. The structure creates a capital loss from a U.S. tax point of view (but not from an economic point of view) which may be offset against existing capital gains." UBS knew this was an illegal tax shelter.

if you're trying to convince me that this industry, which has been mired in fraud at least since I've been born (S&L bailout was as a result of fraud) isn't capable of fraud then you won't convince me, I'm sorry....

here alone is a report of the Fed working with a bank to falsify documents--something connected with our current crisis...