A federal jury found an 87-year-old Florida man owes the U.S. government civil penalties amounting to 150 percent of the value of his Swiss bank account, the biggest such penalty by percentage on record, his lawyers said.
Carl Zwerner must pay a 50 percent penalty on the annual value of the account in 2004, 2005 and 2006 for willfully failing to file a U.S. Treasury form called a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, or FBAR, jurors in Miami ruled Thursday. Zwerner didn’t owe the penalty for 2007, the jurors found in a lawsuit brought by the U.S.
