One of the greatest nightmares of any country's government is fraud. This is especially true where the country is the victim of the fraud either by its citizens or corporate entities. More so as defrauding the country effects its economic and financial state. No matter how sensitive a country might be, it can still, one way of the other, be defrauded. For example, the United States (U.S.) is one of the sophisticated countries but that’s not enough to prevent fraud. The following provides three examples of when corporations defrauded the government.
First, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, and its subsidiaries (Atlanta Medical Center Incorporation and North Fulton Medical Center Incorporation) have been recorded to have defrauded the U.S. government in connection with the mode they adopted in the operation of their health care scheme. They defrauded the U.S. government by illegally paying money in exchange for referral of patients.
Olens, the Attorney General of Georgia said “Tenet took advantage of vulnerable pregnant women in clear violation of the law by paying kickbacks in order to bring their referrals to Tenet hospitals."
He stated further “Through this scheme, Tenet defrauded the Georgia Medicaid program, and reaped hundreds of millions of dollars. This is an unprecedented settlement for the state of Georgia, and reflects my office’s commitment to protecting Georgia taxpayers by uncovering Medicaid fraud and abuse.”
Consequently, Tenet Healthcare Corporation and its above-stated subsidiaries were held to pay five hundred and thirteen million dollars to resolve the criminal charges and civil claims with the two subsidiaries forfeiting one hundred and $45 million to U.S.
Our second story involves UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank that has offices all over the world. UBS conspired to defraud the government by causing an obstruction on the operations of the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and conspiring and assisting in concealing the assets of American citizens in order for them to evade the payment of taxes.
When this fraud was detected, the company was charged to court for fraud perpetrated against the government of U.S and Tax charges. The accused (UBS) entered into an agreement to settle the charges and agreed to pay $780 million as restitution, penalties, and fines. The bank also agreed to turn over records of accounts and identities of about 19,000 wealthy American customers that were involved in the cross-border program of the bank and who the U.S. government suspected are evading the payment of relevant taxes by operating secret Swiss bank accounts.
The second limb of the agreement was necessitated by the state prosecutor’s belief that the bank assisted American customers to hide over twenty billion assets.
Our final tale involves a similar fraudulent dealing against the U.S. government by Wegelin & Company, a private Swiss bank that engaged in the business of assisting rich American customers to conceal their assets in order to avoid the payment of the exact taxes they ought to have paid in consonance with federal law.
The bank pleaded guilty to the charge in 2013 and agreed to pay the sum of $74 million as fine.
In the light of the sums of monies recovered from the above-mentioned corporations, it is apt to conclude that many more government programs would be funded and funded appropriately if people and corporations would stop defrauding fellow Americans.
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Ths article is provided by The Rodman Law Group, LLC, a cryptocurrency and intellectual property law firm.
