Seattle Times – Federal prosecutors are expected to unseal indictments Thursday in a massive tax-evasion investigation involving the Seattle investment firm Quellos Group, accusing its officers of operating offshore tax shelters used to hide hundreds of millions of dollars from the government, according to lawyers familiar with the case.

Quellos has been under investigation for at least two years and in 2006 earned its own chapter in a report titled "Tax Haven Abuses: The Enablers, the Tools and the Secrecy" published by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

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AFP – The United States and Switzerland will begin negotiations to amend their bilateral income tax treaty to provide for improved transparency, the US Treasury Department said Monday.

The announcement came following Group of 20 pledges last week to clean up tax havens and fight tax fraud and as bilateral relations have been strained by a massive tax fraud case involving Swiss banking giant UBS.

The negotiations to amend the 1996 treaty are expected to begin April 28 in Berne, Switzerland, the Treasury Department said in a statement.

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