Switzerland-based lender Coutts & Co AG will pay an additional $27.9 million in penalties related to a 2015 non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice for potential tax-related criminal charges linked to undeclared U.S.-related accounts.
The bank paid roughly $78.5 million in 2015 for managing 1,337 U.S. related accounts and has now acknowledged that it should have disclosed an additional 311 accounts that it knew about or should have known about at the time it entered the non-prosecution agreement — resulting in the additional levy, according to the Justice Departments Dec. 20 statement.
The U.S. Department of Justice had similar non-prosecution agreements with 80 banks and imposed a fine of more than $1.36 billion under the Swiss bank program, which aimed to provide Swiss banks a path to resolve criminal liabilities stemming from off-shore banking services provided to U.S. taxpayers.