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Celebrity financial consultant indicted on tax charges

June 05, 2009

The former CEO of an investment firm with A-list clients including Bill and Hillary Clinton was indicted yesterday on tax charges. The New York Times reports:

The executive, Jeffrey I. Greenstein, is a former chief executive and a co-founder of the Quellos Group, whose core business was bought by BlackRock for $1.7 billion in 2007. He faces 18 counts of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion.
Quellos, which was based in Seattle and catered to wealthy investors, had star clients, including former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton; Robert Wood Johnson IV, the owner of the New York Jets football team; and the Hollywood mogul Haim Saban, the producer of the “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” children’s show, according to public records.

The charges arise from basis-shifting tax shelters like those involved in the recent BDO guilty pleas Look for lots of finger-pointing and a blame-the-accountants-and-lawyers defense.

Tags: tax crime.tax shelters.