He’s the richest gent in English high society you’ve never heard of. For years, while his foreign exchange trading empire was in full flow, Urs Schwarzenbach was one of the biggest in the business.
Since his first major break getting the job of running UBS’s foreign exchange operations in London during the Seventies, he has earned hundreds of millions of pounds trading in currencies.
But reports of a major fight with the tax authorities back in his original home in Switzerland suggest life is becoming rather more difficult for this close friend of Prince Charles.
Not that he isn’t still short of a bob or too. The Sunday Times Rich List puts his current worth at £1.08 billion, making him Britain’s 109th richest person.
When looking for UK properties, he was able to afford not just a mansion in the shires but a whole village — Hambleden in Buckinghamshire, which formed the backdrop to Midsomer Murders.
Companies House and Land Registry records show that, like his 26,000-acre Scottish estate, he owns the village through offshore vehicles.
A director of the Guards Polo Club, owner of the Black Bears polo team and a keen former player of the sport, he lives with his wife Francesca, a former Miss Australia, in Culham Court, part of his sprawling estate — which is also owned offshore — near Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire.
His friendship with polo-loving Princes Charles and Harry add to his socialising with City royalty like Icap’s Michael Spencer.
But outside those rarefied circles, he is immensely private, only appearing in the newspapers on the society circulars of the poshest British aristocratic functions.
Business contacts who have worked with him in the UK describe him as “extremely decent” and “impeccably charming” although precisely how he got so super-rich is hard to surmise beyond his ownership of InterExchange, a foreign exchange dealership he set up in 1976.
In a rare interview in 2011, he gave the vaguest of explanations: “I got some money from my father and started in the Seventies, to speculate in currencies. I’ve sold British pounds at the right time, among other things.”
However he made his money, few get that wealthy without making enemies. In Schwarzenbach’s case, that seems to include some very influential authorities in Switzerland.
Recently, as he stopped off in his new Gulfstream jet at an out-of-the-way airport in Spain, he was reportedly held by customs officers.
According to a local police statement, a 67-year-old Swiss citizen — believed to be Schwarzenbach —was asked if he had anything to declare: “No,” came his reported response. But according to a Guardia Civil press release, the officials found in the passenger cabin a large — 3.5 metres by two metres — artwork, rolled up in plastic. The piece was recently completed by the British painter Ben Johnson.
The Guardia Civil seized the painting, Patio de los Arrayanes, under suspicion that it was being smuggled — “contrabando de arte” as the press statement put it. The “sole occupant of the plane” was then told he was under suspicion of attempting to move the €160,000 (£125,000) picture to Spain without paying taxes.
Schwarzenbach was, by all accounts, furious and friends say he denies any wrongdoing.
The tycoon is one of the world’s biggest art collectors, and even had a private gallery built in Australia solely to house his Aboriginal collection. His friends claim the Spanish were given a duff tip-off by the Swiss authorities. They say he only stopped over in Spain en route to Morocco, where the picture was destined to hang in his renovated palace in Marrakech.
This version of events seems to be backed by the artist himself. Johnson tells the Evening Standard from his Hammersmith studio that the piece was specially made to go with another already hanging in the palace.
“He had kindly let it be displayed at a public gallery in Southampton first but we always knew it was going to Marrakech because it was to go with another picture,” he says.
A simple mistake by the Swiss authorities, then? Not according to one friend: “Urs has trodden on the wrong toes in Switzerland, and this is what you might call a warning shot.”
For Schwarzenbach is involved in long-running battles with Swiss tax authorities over other parts of his art collection, including works he has installed in another of his properties, the Dolder Grand Hotel overlooking Lake Zurich.
Travel and art guides rave about the Dolder collection boasting Pissarros, Warhols and Dalis. But the Swiss Customs Administration has claimed he imported valuable artworks without paying millions of francs in tax.
In 2013, the authorities searched the Dolder and Schwarzenbach-related art in a Zurich duty-free warehouse, seizing documents and electronic data.
Again, he strongly argues he had done nothing wrong, telling a Swiss newspaper: “If the authorities see the facts differently from my lawyers, the judge must decide.” He said the Dolder artworks were for sale, so were not liable to Swiss import taxes. Tax would only be payable when the pieces were sold, he added.
This year, according to reports in the Swiss press, as investigations into his businesses’ tax affairs continued, authorities were granted a freezing order on Swfr200 million (£142 million).
Schwarzenbach, who declined to comment due to the ongoing investigations, is said to have wound down his foreign exchange trading in Zurich since last summer.
That has triggered speculation in some quarters of the Swiss media that he was trying to move cash out because of his tax troubles. Time to buy some more pretty British villages, perhaps?
Whatever happens, there’ll be plenty to chat about between chukkas as the polo season gets under way.
