As the glitterati jet in for Art Basel Miami Beach, the Swiss banking giant UBS -- the event's main sponsor -- plans to fete a gaggle of elite clients, as in years past, with lavish parties at the swank Setai, Delano and Tides.

But a little more than a week before the start of this year's art festival, UBS remains under the cloud of a massive investigation into its alleged role in helping wealthy U.S. clients avoid paying taxes by sheltering their money in secret offshore accounts.

U.S. authorities are demanding the names of thousands of investors who counted on Swiss secrecy laws, and Swiss discretion, to keep their financial affairs private. One client, a part-time Lighthouse Point resident unmasked early in the probe, has been forced to pay $52 million in back taxes and penalties.

Some of the bankers' alleged deeds seem downright unbankerly: smuggling diamonds into the United States in a toothpaste tube; using encrypted computers to conduct transactions; lying to U.S. immigration agents that business trips were for nonbusiness purposes; slipping from hotel to hotel to elude detection.

It is all the more unseemly because UBS, one of the world's largest banks, has a distinguished history in Switzerland and has cultivated a corporate image as a patron of high culture, sponsoring tennis tournaments, yachting competitions and, of course, Art Basel.

But federal prosecutors say these events and others served as fertile turf where bankers could mingle with affluent Americans and persuade them to become bank clients.

One of the most coveted invitations during Art Basel Miami Beach has been the UBS private dinner party, where cocktails flow freely around the Delano Hotel pool and dinner is served under a chic tent on the beach. At past dinners, UBS has wooed its elite clients with mountains of stone crabs, lobster and shrimp, seared tuna, beef tenderloin and massive strawberries dipped in white chocolate.

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

UBS itself hasn't been charged with any crime. Bank officials say UBS continues to cooperate with investigators. Miami U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta, however, made it clear that investigators will follow leads wherever they take them -- ``to individuals or institutions.''

Much of the sordid tale has been unfolding before a grand jury at the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, where one former UBS banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, already has pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government and is spilling his secrets big-time.

A much bigger fish -- Raoul Weil, who was chairman and chief executive of UBS global wealth management and business banking -- was indicted this month on a charge of conspiring to help about 17,000 U.S. clients potentially evade taxes by hiding $20 billion in secret offshore accounts.

Prosecutors allege that UBS bankers aided U.S. clients in hiding assets through sham entities, such as charitable trusts and shell corporations, set up around the globe -- in such places as Panama, Hong Kong and Lichtenstein, as well as Switzerland. The bankers allegedly advised customers with secret offshore accounts to misrepresent bank withdrawals as ''loans'' and to use foreign-issued credit cards to avoid detection.

In recent years, the ''cross-border'' business blossomed into about $200 million a year in revenue for UBS, prosecutors say.

THE IRS MOVES IN

In June, the bank was slapped with a civil Internal Revenue Service summons, authorized by a Fort Lauderdale federal judge. It ordered UBS to hand over information on about 19,000 U.S. clients who have undisclosed offshore accounts. (Estimates in various court papers differ on the number of U.S. clients with offshore accounts.)

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