Billionaire Robert Smith Admits Evading Taxes for Years (1)

Billionaire Robert F. Smith has been hailed as a brilliant investor who built Vista Equity Partners into a private equity powerhouse and a generous philanthropist lauded for paying off the student debt of Morehouse College’s entire graduating class last year.

But federal prosecutors undercut that image on Thursday, saying Smith concealed income and evaded taxes for 15 years by using foreign trusts, corporations and bank accounts to cheat the Internal Revenue Service.

Robert Smith at the World Economic Forum in January.

Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg

Smith, 57, avoided prosecution only by cooperating in a case against Robert Brockman, a Houston businessman accused Thursday of using a web of Caribbean entities to ...