Igor Olenicoff, a Newport Beach billionaire real estate mogul, has added racketeering charges to his $500 million lawsuit against Swiss banking giant

Igor Olenicoff, a Newport Beach billionaire real estate mogul, has added racketeering charges to his $500 million lawsuit against Swiss banking giant UBS AG and individuals who sold what he claims were overseas investments falsely billed as tax-free accounts.Olenicoff, founder of the Newport Beach commercial real estate firm Olen Properties, agreed in December 2007 to pay federal authorities $52 million in taxes and penalties after pleading guilty to criminal tax evasion charges.
In September, he filed suit against UBS but added more details to his allegations, including the racketeering charge, in an amended complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on Jan. 9.The suit names UBS AG, four other companies and 25 individuals as defendants in a scheme that “robbed” Olenicoff of millions of dollars through charging fees or simply pocketing his money, while also exposing him to criminal charges and causing his company to lose more than $100 million in business.
Olenicoff’s attorney, William J. King, said the lawsuit seeks to penalize the financiers who targeted more than 19,000 wealthy investors with a scheme that enriched only the money handlers.“The issue isn’t his tax penalties,” King said of Olenicoff. “It’s that he thought he was doing something legal from a tax perspective and he trusted their advice and they were stealing from him.”

Posted in: Swiss banking giant UBS AG