Offshore Alert to feature US tax investigators

CNS): Three senior representatives of the United States Internal Revenue Service will present a session on the tax agency's various offshore initiatives at the forthcoming Offshore Alert conference. Daniel Reeves, John C. McDougal and Thomas J. Kelly will reveal some of the IRS’ civil and criminal enforcement activities designed to identify US taxpayers who illegally avoid taxes through offshore financial centres.

Daniel Revees has been the lead investigator of the IRS' Offshore Credit Card Project and other offshore compliance initiatives for the past seven years. John C. McDougal, a Special Trial Attorney for the IRS has served as counsel to the agency's offshore initiatives for the last nine years and Thomas J. Kelly, Director, Financial Crimes for the IRS, is based at its headquarters in Washington, DC. During their session, Reeves, McDougal and Kelly will discuss IRS enforcement programmes aimed at US taxpayers who illegally avoid or evade payment of required US taxes through the use of offshore bank accounts, entities, structures, investments and other financial arrangements in foreign locations, and to bring them back into compliance.

The experts will be talking about the Offshore Credit Card Project; Current initiatives using the John Doe Summons Process; The Promoter Investigations Program and the Voluntary Disclosure Practice.

The three men form part of a comprehensive line-up of experts related to the offshore world at the 7th Annual OffshoreAlert Financial Due Diligence Conference  which will be held at the Eden Roc Resort & Spa, in Miami Beach, Florida, 26-28 April.

David Marchant, the publisher of Offshore Alert, said that other highlights for the 2009 conference include an examination of the Bernard Madoff affair, where attendees will learn how to identify Ponzi schemes so that they may be avoided, and a Public Relations Spotlight, in which Robert Dilenschneider will show attendees how to effectively market their message to an international audience

Presenters include Jeffrey Owens, Director of the OECD's Center for Tax Policy and Administration; Bob Roach, Counsel and Chief Investigator on US Senator Carl Levin's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations; Edward Robbins, Jr., who defended billionaire UBS client Igor Olenicoff in a criminal tax case that led to the indictments of Bradley Birkenfeld, a former private banker at UBS, and Raoul Weil, Chairman and CEO of Global Wealth Management & Business Banking at UBS.

The OffshoreAlert Conference will focus on fraud detection and prevention, anti-money laundering, financial compliance, asset recovery, intelligence-gathering, and general risk management, all with an emphasis on international business transactions, particularly those conducted in and through offshore financial centres.