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

[Magda Hassan]

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

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• [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/edvulliamy]Ed Vulliamy
  
• The Observer, Sunday 16 January 2011 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.
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan...pe=article
  
  
  

[David Guyatt]

Let's hope it is not left to the Guardian newspaper to publish the documents,because based on past performance they cover up the unpleasant parts and only publish the unimportant bits.

Good ol' Grauniad. It never misses a trick. It's had some of Elmer's tax evasion documents (oops sorry, "tax avoidance" - the wealthy's legal version of tax evasion) since 2009 and, by Golly and by Jiminy, it still hasn't published them.

Save page 12, I've got a scoop!

[Jan Klimkowski]

Wikileaks has also failed to release/publish the information:

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.

[Magda Hassan]

Elmer has started his own Whistle Blowing site. I posted about it yesterday or the day before in the Research Tools and Useful Links board. So maybe it will see the light of day yet. Or maybe it is still a bargaining chip.

[David Guyatt]

Fingers crossed then. The refusal to publish names is an egregious act by both a supposed whistle-blowing entity and a supposed news organization.

But I have the feeling he won't publish the names.

Hope I'm wrong though.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Elmer has started his own Whistle Blowing site. I posted about it yesterday or the day before in the Research Tools and Useful Links board. So maybe it will see the light of day yet. Or maybe it is still a bargaining chip.

Ah yes!

http://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/show...#post31524

Thank you, Magda.

[David Guyatt]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20110117/tts...02f96.html

Swiss whistleblower hands bank data to WikiLeaks
8 mins ago
Olesya Dmitracova and Chris Vellacott

A former Swiss private banker handed over data on hundreds of offshore bank account holders to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday, saying he wanted to draw attention to financial abuses.


Rudolf Elmer, 55, 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.

Swiss national Elmer handed Assange the data at a news conference at a media club in London. The two yellow and blue discs contain information on around 2,000 banking clients, both individuals and companies, he said, declining to reveal further details on the data.

"Working in the Cayman Islands I realised that something was wrong... I want to let our society know what I do know because it's damaging our society in a way that money is moved away by financial institutions, multinational conglomerates and high-net-worth individuals, money is hidden in offshore ventures," Elmer told a room packed with reporters.

Julius Baer has accused Elmer of embarking on a vendetta against the company. Its shares fell more than 3 percent on Monday and traders cited the WikiLeaks link as a potential factor.

VETTING INFORMATION

WikiLeaks will take at least "a couple of weeks" to vet the data before publishing it, Assange said. Vetting will be done by themselves, media organisations and other partners to protect sources.

"We have a four-year publishing history. We have never been wrong ... so far as we are aware in relation to anything we have published," said Assange, who is on bail in Britain and fighting extradition to Sweden where he faces questioning over alleged sex crimes. WikiLeaks may also hand over some of the material to Britain's Serious Fraud Office, he added.

In 2007 Elmer became one of the first whistleblowers to use WikiLeaks, which angered U.S. authorities last year by publishing hundreds of secret diplomatic cables it had obtained.

Assange said the data Elmer had provided previously about the Cayman Islands revealed "corrupt practices" and "clear asset-hiding." He said he expected similar revelations from the new data.

Julius Baer denounced Elmer for waging a campaign to discredit the bank and its customers.

"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."

[David Guyatt]

WikiLeaks will take at least "a couple of weeks" to vet the data before publishing it, Assange said. Vetting will be done by themselves, media organisations and other partners to protect sources

Sources? We already know who the "source" - he's shaking Assange's hand in front of the world media.

This sounds suspiciously like protecting the names of the guilty to me?

[Peter Lemkin]

WikiLeaks will take at least "a couple of weeks" to vet the data before publishing it, Assange said. Vetting will be done by themselves, media organisations and other partners to protect sources

Sources? We already know who the "source" - he's shaking Assange's hand in front of the world media.

This sounds suspiciously like protecting the names of the guilty to me?

Why would someone put their life at risk by doing a public hand over of such hot info...to an organization who claims to have the perfect way of getting it anonymously? I smell something very fishy here..... More so that he has done this twice and the first info didn't come out.....what the f is going on here?! I sense we are being 'had', but it is getting harder to tell by whom.

[Magda Hassan]

It is not in this article but my understanding from other reading it was that they need to check each name to make sure they are non-tax paying delinquents and not gunuinely using the Cayman Islands banking system as a legitimate bank. :monkeypiss:
Supposedly those that are tax avoiding will get their details published.