Suicide Victim May Have Hidden Millions Abroad (a UBS tax dodger)

[Robbien]

Source: NYT

He seemed, in many ways, like a man from another time, a Gatsbyesque figure who glided through a world of old money, private clubs and pedigree horses, his family name emblazoned on Ivy League halls.

Then, in an instant, he was gone — his privileged life ended, by his own hand, with a single gunshot to the head.

No one can know exactly what Finn M. W. Caspersen, a prominent philanthropist and the heir to the Beneficial Corporation fortune, was thinking when he decided to take his life on Labor Day. Although Mr. Caspersen, 67, was battling kidney cancer, his suicide shocked his family and friends, The New York Times’s Lynnley Browning writes.

But Mr. Caspersen, a patron of Harvard and Princeton who gave away tens of millions of dollars to charity, apparently harbored a secret: He was suspected of dodging many millions in federal taxes. The authorities, it seemed, were closing in.

At the time of his death, investigators were building a case against Mr. Caspersen on suspicion of using secret offshore bank accounts to evade taxes.

The authorities had asserted he might have owed as much as $100 million in back taxes and fines or, possibly, even have faced prison

Read more: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/suicide-vi... /

---

Note: Caspersen gave about $590,000 to the Republican Party between 1998 and 2001 according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

[No Elephants]

1. With all these allegations, but no proof, I don't know whether to say

RIP or good riddance.

[jasi2006]

2. I believe that you will find that most of the financial criminals have hidden

money abroad. Maddoff included.

[Lance_Boyle]

3. Not a suicide "victim,"

a suicide "perpetrator."

[ScreamingMeemie]

20. You are so very fucking wrong.

[Soylent Brice]

4. the first of many to come, i'm sure.

K&R

[enid602]

5. suicide

I doubt that his suicide will keep the tax man away.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Richard Cory

WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.


Edwin Arlington Robinson

[Old and In the Way]

7. One of those poems that sticks with you.

I read that in Jr. High or High School, a brazillion years ago...it's always stuck with me....wealth is no guarantee that you'll be happier in this world. Of course, it probably won't hurt, either.

[karynnj]

13. 1960s vintage Simon and Garfunkle adaptation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euuCiSY0qYs

[WheelWalker]

16. Exactly

[Dover]

8. Will the investigations about back taxes continue?...n/t

[Robbien]

11. The article said yes

Most of his money is in trust on which I expect the IRS will keep close tabs.

[FailureToCommunicate]

9. I'm sorry for his family. BUT, if he owed $100 million in TAXES, what could he have

been making or worth?!? And at the low -post Reagan- tax rates for wealthy???
Boggles the mind.

[WriteDown]

10. A name that sounds like its right out of classic literature

Finn M. W. Caspersen

[UpInArms]

12. according to the article, he a one week from now to turn himself in to the IRS

more from the linked article

The precise nature of the tax investigation was unclear. What is known is that Mr. Caspersen, a longtime fixture in New Jersey political circles, had been swept up in a broad, federal crackdown on the use of offshore bank accounts by wealthy Americans. UBS, the big Swiss bank, divulged the names of nearly 300 of its American clients in February and agreed to hand over several thousand more last month.

One wealthy UBS client, Igor Olenicoff, hid an estimated $200 million in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to a single federal tax felony and paid $52 million in back taxes and penalties. More recently, several other UBS clients, among them a Florida yacht broker, admitted to tax evasion.

As the inquiries continue, the names of more well-to-do people are likely to come to light. Those who have hidden money offshore face a difficult choice: They have a week to turn themselves over to the Internal Revenue Service or gamble that they will not be caught. The I.R.S. is offering amnesty to those who disclose their offshore holdings by Sept. 23. After that, offenders could face criminal prosecution.

The Caspersen case centers on bank accounts in Liechtenstein, which, like Switzerland, is a leading offshore haven. The I.R.S. learned that Mr. Caspersen held an account at LGT, the private bank controlled with Liechtenstein’s royal family, The Times reported, citing the person close to the investigation. Liechtenstein pledged last December to disclose the names of some wealthy Americans with bank accounts there, but it was unclear if Mr. Caspersen’s name was among them or how the I.R.S. learned of any account in his name.

The questions are unlikely to end with Mr. Caspersen’s death. His family was associated with Beneficial, the consumer lending giant, for most of the 20th century. Mr. Caspersen ran the company for 20 years before selling it to Household International in 1998 for $8.6 billion.

(emphasis mine)

(oops!)

[dysfunctional press]

14. suicide "victim"..???

wtf is a suicide "victim"...?

[UpInArms]

15. the one who is killed by the suicide bomber?

[dysfunctional press]

19. that would be a homicide victim, as they are killed by someone else.

[pitohui]

17. well he doesn't sound like much of a victim

it sounds to me like he had the best of life and when his time ran out (kidney cancer plus criminal charges) he was 67 and it was time to go anyway, so all he really missed was the lingering suffering of a late stage cancer patient

there was a time when to die at 67 was to have lived a full life

i don't pity this man, i don't think he missed anything of what life had to give and he went out on his own terms and cut his suffering to end

the people i pity are the ones who are dying of a lingering cancer or another disease but have to keep working, because otherwise their family has nothing, or the ones who are accused of a crime they didn't commit because the gov't is too fucked to keep its paperwork straight (i've known friends to have tax issues hang over them for years until the IRS finally figured out the friend was right and the IRS was wrong)

[ScreamingMeemie]

21. My husband.

Thank you.

[UpInArms]

23. ...

:cry

[DavidDvorkin]

18. Imagine having millions to hide!

[AnneD]

22. Mind if I post this in SMW???

EOM.