Warner has paid a civil penalty of $53 million and filed amended tax returns for the years 1999 to 2008, his lawyers said. He has also paid $14 million in back taxes and interest, according to prosecutors.
Prison Time
Still, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Petersen pressed Kocoras today for a punishment that included prison time. She said the sentence imposed on Troost, whose unpaid tax liability was only a fifth of Warner’s, should be the minimum term.
Failing to send him to jail would reduce the crime of tax evasion to “little more than a bad investment,” she said.
At a post-hearing press conference, Chicago U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon said Warner had been held accountable. He rejected the notion Kocoras had sent a message that a wealthy man need only write a check to avoid prison. Judges must account for many circumstances in tailoring sentences to individual defendants, he said.
“There is no right or wrong when it comes to imposing sentence, and different judges are going to see similar facts and circumstances in different way,” Fardon said.
UBS Account
From 1996 to 2008, Warner parked some of his money first at UBS AG in Switzerland and then at Zuercher Kantonalbank, failing to tell his own accountants of those accounts, according to court papers. By 2008, the balance of his undisclosed account exceeded $107 million, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Conway told Kocoras in October.
Warner failed to pay almost $5.6 million in taxes on the undeclared income hidden in those accounts from 1999 to 2007, prosecutors said in a pre-sentence brief filed on Jan. 7.
Warner continued to hide the money until it was clear he was going to be found out, Petersen told the court today.