Finance 16.01.2011
Former Swiss banker poised to give account details to WikiLeaks
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The CDs have incriminating information on about 2,000 people
A former Swiss banker plans on providing secret account information to WikiLeaks on Monday. Rudolf Elmer was one of the first people to give controversial data to the website, releasing internal bank documents in 2007.
A former Swiss private banker says he is planning to give account information on around 2,000 clients to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
Rudolf Elmer, who was fired from Julius Bär, a leading Swiss private banking group, in 2002 and who faces trial in Switzerland on Wednesday for an earlier breach of bank secrecy laws, told Switzerland's Der Sonntag newspaper that he intends to hand over two CDs of data to the controversial Internet platform.
Elmer told the newspaper that the CDs include names, balances and transfer information of some 2,000 people who may be guilty of using offshore bank accounts to duck their tax obligations.
"The documents show that they are hiding behind banking secrecy laws, possibly to evade taxes," Elmer told Der Sonntag, adding that the data came from "at least three financial institutions."
Elmer will officially give WikiLeaks the information at a Monday press conference in London, which the site's founder, Julian Assange, is also expected to attend. However, the information will go through a vetting procedure before appearing on the WikiLeaks homepage.
"WikiLeaks will go through the data, and if they really deal with tax evasion, they will be published later," Elmer said.
History repeating
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Elmer has worked with WikiLeaks before
Elmer said that the data involved multimillionaires, international companies and hedge funds from several countries including the US, Britain and Germany. Roughly 40 politicians were among the individuals featured in the information, along with prominent business people and artists, he said.
Elmer, who was formerly Julius Bär's chief operating officer in the Cayman Islands, was among the first people to provide high profile information to WikiLeaks, releasing client data to the website in 2007. He faces a trial in Switzerland on Wednesday in connection with this earlier leak. The information he released led to tax evasion prosecutions in several countries.
Elmer said the data to be handed over on Monday, much of which was passed on to him by fellow whistleblowers, concerns bank activity between 1990 and 2009.
The government in Berne has come under growing pressure in recent years to relax its strict banking secrecy laws and do more to help other governments identify people using Swiss bank accounts to dodge taxes at home.
Switzerland has made some concessions on this issue, most notably releasing details of around 4,450 clients of banking giant UBS to the US government last year, after Washington agreed to drop a lawsuit against the financial institution.
Author: Mark Hallam (AFP, Reuters)
Editor: Kyle James
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"Whole story"
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
he flies home to stand trial over his actions
• Ed Vulliamy
• The Observer, Sunday 16 January 2011
• Article history
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
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.
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