Rudolf Elmer, Former Julius Baer Banker, Hands 2,000 Private Banking Files to WikiLeaks
January 17th, 2011Via: Sydney Morning Herald:
THE Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer has provided WikiLeaks with two CDs containing information on more than 2000 bank clients suspected of tax evasion.
The disks were handed over in London last night to the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. They are said to contain secret bank details of clients, including politicians, multinationals, hedge funds and organised-crime figures.
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“I want to talk about the Swiss secrecy system, which is damaging our society. The short story is simple: I was in the Cayman Islands and there was a mouse tail and I started to pull on it. The tail got bigger, looked like a dragon tail, I went back to Switzerland and it became bigger, a fire-breathing dragon with several heads. One head was the banks, the other the Swiss press, to an extent, and they all came after me and my family.”
Mr Elmer faces court in Zurich tomorrow over allegations that he breached Swiss banking laws after he handed client data to WikiLeaks in 2007.
He left the bank in 2004 after eight years at its Cayman Islands trust subsidiary. During that time, he has said, he became aware of widespread tax evasion by prominent customers and that this occurred with the full knowledge of the bank’s top management.
