Businessman admits hiding $1.5M offshore
NEW YORK — A Russian businessman who emigrated to the U.S. and then became a citizen of his adopted homeland Tuesday became the latest suspect to plead guilty to charges he failed to disclose a secret offshore bank account to the IRS.
Viktor Kordash, 64, potentially faces a maximum five-year prison term for his failure to file tax reports on as much as $1.5 million he held in an account at Switzerland’s Wegelin & Co. bank, Manhattan federal prosecutors said. The penalty also covers tens of thousands of dollars he received in cash distributions from the account.
“For over a decade Viktor Kordash lived in this country, shirking his legal obligation to pay his fair share of taxes,” said Manhattan US. Attorney Preet Bharara, who added the businessman has now “been held to account for his crime.”
According to prosecutors and court records, Kordash opened the Wegelin account in the early 1980s while living in Russia. He kept the account when he became a U.S. citizen in 1986, and he continued to use it for more than two decades as he settled in Cliffside Park, N.J. and ran an antique reproductions business in New York City.
Kordash closed the secret account in 2010 and transferred the nearly $1 million remaining balance to his wife.
But he did not file the mandatory Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts reports with the IRS from 1986 through 2010.
As part of his guilty plea, Kordash agreed to pay more than $268,000 in back taxes and a civil penalty of more than $750,000. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 12 by Manhattan U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams.
Kordash is one of dozens of Americans who have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial during a multi-year federal crackdown on offshore tax evasion.
Bank Wegelin pleaded guilty in January 2013 to helping wealthy U.S. account holders evade taxes by hiding income and assets offshore.
Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse pleaded guilty in a $2.6 billion criminal settlement with U.S. authorities last week over similar allegations.
