A former Swiss private banker has passed on
offshore bank account details of allegedly high net worth
individuals (HNWIs) who evade taxes to whistle-blowing website
Wikileaks.
Rudolf Elmer, who was sacked by Julius Baer in
2002, passed two CDs containing the data from more than 2000
accounts to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at a London press
conference.
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The information, allegedly including names of
HNWIs, is to be released in as little as two weeks, Wikileaks said
in a statement.
Elmer goes on trial at the
Zurich District Court on 19 January for breaching bank secrecy
in 2008 when he used the Wikileaks website to publish internal bank
documents.
Personal intimidation campaign against Julius
Baer
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By GlobalDataJulius Baer said in a statement
that Elmer’s “personal intimidation campaign and vendetta”
against the bank since 2004 was based on baseless accusations
and falsified documents.
“The aim of his activities was and is to discredit Julius Baer
as well as clients in the eyes of the public. With this goal in
mind, Elmer spread baseless accusations and passed on unlawfully
acquired respectively retained documents to the media, and later
also to Wikileaks,” the bank said.
Julius Baer claimed Elmer also made death threats against
employees to back up his campaign.
At the time of his dismissal in December 2002, Rudolf Elmer
worked as the chief operating officer of Julius Baer Bank &
Trust in the Cayman Islands.
Fresh leak could trouble Baer
HNWs
According to several media reports, the bank
details of 2,000 accounts include prominent business people,
artists, around 40 politicians and hedge funds from several
countries including the US, Germany and Britain.
It was reported that the data came from three
financial institutions, including Julius Baer ,and covered the
period 1990-2009.
Julius Baer’s Wikileaks
lawsuit
Julius Baer mounted a lawsuit against
Wikileaks in 2008 for posting confidential bank documents.
The Swiss bank was at first successful in
getting a US district judge to order the site to shut down.
But the judge reversed his decision amid an
outcry in the US over the implications for free speech.
