Former Boeing manager pleads guilty to Swiss bank tax dodge

SEATTLE – Former  Boeing sales manager Roberto Cittadini of Bellevue, pleaded guilty on Monday to a charge of  concealing nearly $2 million in once secret Swiss bank accounts.

He was charged with filing a false income tax return.

 Cittadini appeared  before Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler in Seattle and accepted responsibility for concealing nearly $2 million in Swiss bank accounts.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Cittadini, a retired sales manager for Boeing, failed to report income from bank accounts under his control at UBS AG in Switzerland on his individual income tax returns from 2001 through 2003.

Additionally, Cittadini failed to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (F-BAR) for each of these years.

Cittadini initially opened an account with UBS in the early 1990s in his own name. Later Swiss bankers helped him transfer monies to other accounts in a bid to conceal the cash from U.S. investigators.

From 2001 through 2003, Cittadini held as much as $1.86 million in assets in the Mataropa Finance Limited (created for him by bankers) account at UBS in Switzerland.

 Theiler scheduled sentencing for Jan. 8, 2010.

 Cittadini faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. Additionally, Cittadini agreed to pay a civil  penalty based on 50 percent of the highest account balance from 2001 to 2007.

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