U.S. authorities have arrested and charged an accountant in Florida in the first tax evasion prosecution of American clients of Swiss bank UBS

The US Justice Department claimed that Steven Michael Rubinstein was accused of filing at least one false tax return which failed to disclose he had an account with UBS. Rubinstein, who holds both US and South African Passports, was arrested at his home in Florida and was ordered to be detained pending a bond hearing.

The criminal complaint filed by Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said Rubinstein's arrest resulted from information provided by UBS to U.S. authorities on the identities and account information of US citizens who were using Swiss bank accounts to evade U.S. taxes. The arrest came a few hours after The New York Times reported that the Justice Department had opened about 100 criminal investigations into wealthy American clients of UBS.

Following the arrest, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida said, "Today is the first of the prosecutions resulting from that disclosure, but it will not be the last," and acting Assistant Attorney General John A. DiCicco of the Justice Department's Tax Division said his unit was "committed to helping the IRS to ferret out and hold accountable taxpayers who are hiding assets in undisclosed foreign accounts."

In February 2009, UBS accepted responsibility for aiding U.S. clients conceal assets from the U.S. government and agreed to pay a $780 million fine as well as provide information about some of its US clients.

Furthermore, U.S. authorities are suing UBS to try to obtain identification of approximately 52,000 undeclared accounts held by Switzerland’s largest bank. It is alleged these undisclosed accounts may contain billions of dollars of US citizen’s hidden assets.