I’ve been following the tussle between the Swiss Bank UBS and the IRS over account for information for some time, and the fact that there is now a settlement which involves handing over account information for about 4500 people, and that prosecutors are working on over 150 criminal tax evasion cases is a very good thing.

Even better is the fact that there is an amnesty deadline in September, and neither UBS nor the Feds are revealing which accounts have turned over, which is having the rich pig tax evaders running around like chickens with their heads cut off, wondering whether or not they are among those accounts turned over.

One of the effects of the tax amnesty program is that about a dozen more banks have now been fingered as having aided clients in evading taxes.

Let’s be clear, for this to have a meaningful effect, there need to be dozens of prosecutions, and a significant number of people both imprisoned and made paupers by this process.

That is the only way that repeat fraud will be deterred.