A British citizen has agreed to plead guilty over his role in helping Americans use offshore accounts to evade taxes through a scheme known as the “Singapore Solution”, US prosecutors said.
Roderic Sage has been ordered to be extradited from the UK and will appear late next week in Manhattan federal court, prosecutors told a judge in a letter on April 30. He could face as long as two years in prison under a deal he reached with the US Justice Department, according to the letter.
Sage was indicted in 2020 and accused of joining a Swiss financial firm and five other executives in a conspiracy that helped US clients evade taxes on more than US$60 million (S$76.38 million) hidden offshore, prosecutors said.
Two of those executives, Daniel Walchli and Rolf Schnellmann, have already pleaded guilty, as has a US taxpayer, Wayne Franklyn Chinn.
Sage was the founder and chief executive officer of a Hong Kong firm that created shell bank accounts, which received money from Privatbank IHAG, a Swiss private bank, federal prosecutors said.
Roger Burlingame, a lawyer for Sage, did not immediately respond to a voice mail and an e-mail seeking comment on the charges.
Walchli admitted that he helped set up a structure for American clients of Privatbank to evade scrutiny by tax authorities. Prosecutors said the bankers approached a handful of high-net-worth clients to help them hide assets from the US government by making transfers to accounts in other countries, then repatriating the funds to Switzerland in new accounts nominally held by a Singapore-based asset management firm.
The conspiracy took place from 2008 to 2014, the US said.
Walchli was sentenced in 2024 to the brief time he spent in custody after surrendering in 2022. He was a member of the executive board of Zurich’s IHAG Holding AG, which owned Privatbank. Charges were unsealed against him in 2021 along with two IHAG bankers, Swiss financial firm Allied Finance Trust AG and two of its executives, along with Sage.
Sage was arrested in London in May 2025, and his extradition was ordered in March, according to the court filing on April 30. He faces a sentence of between 18 and 24 months in prison and agreed to pay US$531,524, according to the filing.
Sage is expected to arrive in New York on May 7.
His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case is US v. Sage, 20-cr-00497, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). BLOOMBERG
