Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer plans to hand over offshore banking secrets of the r

**StrontiumDog** · 16-01-2011, 06:26 PM

http://m.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/j...a&type=article

Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer plans to hand over offshore banking secrets of the rich and famous to WikiLeaks

He will disclose the details of 'massive potential tax evasion' before he flies home to stand trial over his actions

Rudolf Elmer in Mauritius: “Well-known pillars of society will hold investment portfolios and may include houses, trading companies, artwork, yachts, jewellery, horses, and so on.” Photograph: Rene Soobaroyen for the Guardian

Ed Vulliamy
The Observer, Sun 16 Jan 2011 00.06 GMT

The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland.

British and American individuals and companies are among the offshore clients whose details will be contained on CDs presented to WikiLeaks at the Frontline Club in London. Those involved include, Elmer tells the Observer, "approximately 40 politicians".

Elmer, who after his press conference will return to Switzerland from exile in Mauritius to face trial, is a former chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands and employee of the powerful Julius Baer bank, which accuses him of stealing the information.

He is also – at a time when the activities of banks are a matter of public concern – one of a small band of employees and executives seeking to blow the whistle on what they see as unprofessional, immoral and even potentially criminal activity by powerful international financial institutions.

Along with the City of London and Wall Street, Switzerland is a fortress of banking and financial services, but famously secretive and expert in the concealment of wealth from all over the world for tax evasion and other extra-legal purposes.

Elmer says he is releasing the information "in order to educate society". The list includes "high net worth individuals", multinational conglomerates and financial institutions – hedge funds". They are said to be "using secrecy as a screen to hide behind in order to avoid paying tax". They come from the US, Britain, Germany, Austria and Asia – "from all over".

Clients include "business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates – from both sides of the Atlantic". Elmer says: "Well-known pillars of society will hold investment portfolios and may include houses, trading companies, artwork, yachts, jewellery, horses, and so on."

"What I am objecting to is not one particular bank, but a system of structures," he told the Observer. "I have worked for major banks other than Julius Baer, and the one thing on which I am absolutely clear is that the banks know, and the big boys know, that money is being secreted away for tax-evasion purposes, and other things such as money-laundering – although these cases involve tax evasion."

Elmer was held in custody for 30 days in 2005, and is charged with breaking Swiss bank secrecy laws, forging documents and sending threatening messages to two officials at Julius Baer.

Elmer says: "I agree with privacy in banking for the person in the street, and legitimate activity, but in these instances privacy is being abused so that big people can get big banking organisations to service them. The normal, hard-working taxpayer is being abused also.

"Once you become part of senior management," he says, "and gain international experience, as I did, then you are part of the inner circle – and things become much clearer. You are part of the plot. You know what the real products and service are, and why they are so expensive. It should be no surprise that the main product is secrecy … Crimes are committed and lies spread in order to protect this secrecy."

The names on the CDs will not be made public, just as a much shorter list of 15 clients that Elmer handed to WikiLeaks in 2008 has remained hitherto undisclosed by the organisation headed by Julian Assange, currently on bail over alleged sex offences in Sweden, and under investigation in the US for the dissemination of thousands of state department documents.

Elmer has been hounded by the Swiss authorities and media since electing to become a whistleblower, and his health and career have suffered.

"My understanding is that my client's attempts to get the banks to act over various complaints he made came to nothing internally," says Elmer's lawyer, Jack Blum, one of America's leading experts in tracking offshore money. "Neither would the Swiss courts act on his complaints. That's why he went to WikiLeaks."

That first crop of documents was scrutinised by the Guardian newspaper in 2009, which found "details of numerous trusts in which wealthy people have placed capital. This allows them lawfully to avoid paying tax on profits, because legally it belongs to the trust … The trust itself pays no tax, as a Cayman resident", although "the trustees can distribute money to the trust's beneficiaries".

Now, Blum says, "Elmer is being tried for violating Swiss banking secrecy law even though the data is from the Cayman Islands. This is bold extraterritorial nonsense. Swiss secrecy law should apply to Swiss banks in Switzerland, not a Swiss subsidiary in the Cayman Islands."

Julius Baer has denied all wrongdoing, and rejects Elmer's allegations. It has said that Elmer "altered" documents in order to "create a distorted fact pattern".

The bank issued a statement on Friday saying: "The aim of [Elmer's] activities was, and is, to discredit Julius Baer as well as clients in the eyes of the public. With this goal in mind, Mr Elmer spread baseless accusations and passed on unlawfully acquired, respectively retained, documents to the media, and later also to WikiLeaks. To back up his campaign, he also used falsified documents."

The bank also accuses Elmer of threatening colleagues.

**StrontiumDog** · 16-01-2011, 06:27 PM

AKA, "how to get yourself dead real fast"....! Maybe...

Or

"My attempt at getting out of shit..."

**jandajoy** · 16-01-2011, 06:47 PM

Good luck to him.

I hope we see more of the same.

**blue** · 16-01-2011, 06:52 PM

what's he waiting for
get on and do it

**billy the kid** · 16-01-2011, 09:32 PM

ah fok this hopefully will be entertaining.
can't wait.

**BobR** · 16-01-2011, 10:08 PM

I hope he has a backup plan....just in case something goes wrong.

**taxexile** · 17-01-2011, 12:18 AM

a sad day indeed for tax exiles and their hard working accountants the world over.

**StrontiumDog** · 17-01-2011, 10:32 PM

Swiss whistleblower hands bank data to WikiLeaks | Reuters

Swiss whistleblower hands bank data to WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (L) receives CD's containing data on offshore bank account holders from former Swiss private banker Rudolf Elmer at the Frontline club in London, January 17, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Paul Hackett

By Mark Hosenball and Olesya Dmitracova
LONDON | Mon Jan 17, 2011 9:43am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - A former Swiss private banker handed over data on hundreds of offshore bank account holders to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a news conference on Monday.

Rudolf Elmer once headed the office of Julius Baer in the Cayman Islands until he was fired by the bank in 2002. He is scheduled to go on trial in Switzerland on Wednesday for breaching bank secrecy.

Elmer handed Assange the data at a news conference at a media club in London. The two yellow and blue discs contain information on 2,000 banking clients who have parked money offshore.

"He (Elmer) is clearly a bona fide whistleblower... We have some kind of duty to support him in that matter," said Assange, who is on bail in Britain and fighting extradition to Sweden where he faces questioning over alleged sex crimes.

Assange angered the U.S. authorities after WikiLeaks published hundreds of secret diplomatic cables it had obtained.

Elmer, who worked in the Cayman Islands for eight years, said: "I know how the system works... It's damaging... (I want) to educate our society."

WikiLeaks will vet the data before publishing it. Vetting will be done by themselves, media organizations and other partners to protect sources amongst other concerns. The process will take at least two weeks, Assange said.

On Sunday, Elmer told Reuters that he hoped his appearance at the news conference would both call attention to offshore financial abuses and promote WikiLeaks as a mechanism for other whistleblowers to air their stories.

Julius Baer said Elmer, who the company fired in 2002, had other motives.

"After his demands (including financial compensation) in connection with the dismissal could not be satisfied, Mr Elmer embarked in 2004 on a personal intimidation campaign and vendetta against Julius Baer," the bank said in a statement.

"The aim of his activities was and is to discredit Julius Baer as well as clients in the eyes of the public."

On Sunday, Elmer told Reuters he hoped Monday's news conference would call attention to offshore financial abuses and that WikiLeaks was his last hope to get his message out.

(Additional reporting by Chris Vellacott in London, Emma Thomasson in Zurich; Editing by Jon Boyle)

**Airportwo** · 17-01-2011, 10:44 PM

The guy on the right looks well pleased by proceedings!

**ribblerat** · 19-01-2011, 01:00 AM

More than a few sweaty rich tax scamming cvnts around the World at the moment i would say ....But they will still get away with it , after all it's only the working class that are supposed to pay taxes and as these rich cvunts have never worked in the true sense of the word and according to their way of thinking why should they pay tax .

**StrontiumDog** · 19-01-2011, 02:41 PM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-1...medium=twitter

19 January 2011 Last updated at 06:55 GMT

Swiss banker linked to Wikileaks on trial over secrecy

Rudolf Elmer accuses the bank, Julius Baer, of persecuting him and his family
Related stories

Wikileaks given Swiss bank data

A former Swiss banker is to go on trial in Zurich for breaching banking secrecy and threatening his former employer.

Rudolf Elmer, who headed Julius Baer's office in the Cayman Islands, is accused of stealing data and trying to extort money from the Swiss bank.

Mr Elmer says he did not breach Swiss banking laws, as the leaked documents referred to accounts in the Caymans.

On Monday, he gave Wikileaks website bank account details of individuals and firms he said were evading taxes.

Mr Elmer said the banks and international authorities had refused to help him show how tax avoidance by the wealthy affects welfare payments.

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, said he would publish the information within weeks, once it had been checked.

'Personal vendetta' Mr Elmer, a certified auditor, worked as Julius Baer's chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands until he was sacked in 2002.

He helped raise the profile of Wikileaks in 2007 after he leaked some of the bank's secret data about its clients to the whistle-blowing website.

Julius Baer says he waged a "personal intimidation campaign and vendetta" and sought to discredit the bank and its customers after it refused his demands for financial compensation following his dismissal.

The 55-year-old accuses the bank of persecuting him and his family, and of offering to pay him 500,000 francs not to expose a widespread system of tax evasion by rich businesspeople and politicians.

He has admitted breaking some laws, but claims he did not breach Swiss banking secrecy rules because all of the information related to the Cayman Islands and therefore lay outside Swiss jurisdiction.

The hearing is expected to last only one day. Prosecutors have asked for Mr Elmer to be sentenced to eight months in jail and fined 2,000 Swiss francs (£1,300; $2,080).

Switzerland's banking secrecy has come under heavy criticism in recent years. It has been forced to hand over details of 4,450 bank accounts to the US as part of a deal to settle an investigation into clients of UBS.

**lom** · 19-01-2011, 03:02 PM

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

Rudolf Elmer, who headed Julius Baer's office in the Cayman Islands, is accused of stealing data and trying to extort money from the Swiss bank

Originally Posted by StrontiumDog

The 55-year-old accuses the bank of persecuting him and his family, and of offering to pay him 500,000 francs not to expose a widespread system of tax evasion by rich businesspeople and politicians

Good on you Rudolf for not accepting an umbrella when people like you are entitled to get a golden parachute.
You're a hero now Rudolf!

**BobR** · 19-01-2011, 04:28 PM

Maybe loyalty is old fashioned, but there is something equally sleazy about being a willing participant, then turning on those who trusted you. Mixed feelings I guess?

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