A senior UBS employee has been detained by US officials as part of an investigation into tax evasion.
The US Department of Justice is investigating whether UBS helped clients evade US taxes.
One employee was "briefly detained'' by US authorities as a "material witness,'' the bank said in a statement.
The Financial Times reported that the employee was Martin Liechti, the Zurich-based head of UBS's wealth management business in the Americas. Rohini Pragasam, a UBS spokeswoman in New York, declined to comment on the FT report. Liechti could not immediately be reached for comment.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating whether UBS employees in Switzerland who advised US clients failed to register with the agency as required, according to the bank's statement.
Battered by $US17.3 billion of first-quarter losses at its investment-banking unit, UBS said yesterday it planned to cut 5500 jobs. The company said clients withdrew a net $US12.2 billion from its asset- and wealth-management divisions. Chief executive Marcel Rohner told analysts he expected "tough business conditions,'' which already caused $US38 billion of markdowns, to continue.
Prosecutors in Mannheim, Germany, are considering opening a criminal probe into allegations that UBS offered Germans help in hiding funds from local tax authorities.
UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank, is also among banks subject to an investigation by US officials into how they marketed auction-rate bonds to investors. Auction-rate failures led to surging costs for some borrowers after dealers stopped bidding for bonds that investors did not want.
UBS announced yesterday that it would quit the US municipal bond market as part of an overhaul of its investment banking operations. The $US2.6 trillion municipal market had its worst start in 12 years in the first quarter.
Bloomberg
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