It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by CanadianDream420
english.aljazeera.net...
A former Swiss banker has passed on documents allegedly detailing tax evasion attempts by hundreds of business leaders, politicians and celebrities to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
Originally posted by m0r1arty
There must be potential here as the energy put into trying to stop this so far shows how those with the purse-strings operate when threatened. Have you any idea why Julian Assange's Swiss bank account was frozen? Has there been a public record of why that occurred? There should be.
Originally posted by gnostician
lt currently is being investigated.
Swiss Bank PostFinance had announced closure of an account in the name of Julian Assange linked to Wikileaks last week. Now it is being investigated on criminal charges.
Read more: newsflavor.com...
Rudolf Elmer, founder of Swiss Whistleblower will appear in court on January 19. He was fired from Swiss bank Julius Bär in 2002, after which he sent documents to several media outlets and Wikileaks, exposing allegedly illegal activities by Julius Bär clients in the Cayman Islands. Wikileaks was briefly shut down by a US court following publication of these documents.
Unlike most whistleblowers, Elmer's identity was never a secret.
I wasn’t looking for anonymity. I signed the first whistle-blower letter to emphasise the credibility but also to show my civil disobedience. It is my conviction that my name is important. People then got in touch with me and I received additional information from other bank clients and further data.
Elmer said he will admit certain counts of coercion, but insisted he didn't break Swiss banking secrecy laws because the files he distributed belonged to a Julius Baer subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, where he worked for the bank for eight years.
"This data wasn't subject to Swiss banking secrecy," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday.
Jan Vonder Muehll, a spokesman for Julius Baer, confirmed Monday that the bank is one of the plaintiffs in the case against Elmer next week before the Zurich court. But he said the trial would focus on the earlier release of data to Swiss media, not their publication on WikiLeaks.
GENEVA (AP) - A Swiss banker whose actions caused a U.S. judge to briefly shut down WikiLeaks three years ago faces trial for allegedly distributing confidential documents showing how his former employer helped rich clients to dodge taxes.
The case appears to be the first time a WikiLeaks informant will go on trial. It comes as the U.S. government also is trying to prosecute individuals linked to the website for publishing secret military and diplomatic files.
Rudolf Elmer, a former employee of Swiss-based Bank Julius Baer, has been ordered to appear before a Zurich regional court Jan. 19 to answer charges of coercion and violating Switzerland's strict banking secrecy laws. If convicted he could be sentenced to up to three years in prison and a fine.
Elmer said he will admit certain counts of coercion, but insisted he didn't break Swiss banking secrecy laws because the files he distributed belonged to a Julius Baer subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, where he worked for the bank for eight years.
"This data wasn't subject to Swiss banking secrecy," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday.
Swiss financial newspaper Cash was among those that in 2005 received a copy of a CD containing 170 megabytes of data on Julius Baer's Cayman operations. The files reportedly showed the bank helped its clients set up secret offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes.
Elmer denied giving the files to Cash, but said he did distribute the CD to several media outlets and tax authorities. He later uploaded some of the same information to WikiLeaks, prompting a U.S. judge to shut down the website after Julius Baer claimed Elmer had engaged in "unlawful dissemination of stolen bank records and personal account information of its customers."
The bank quietly dropped its U.S. lawsuit when the suspension order was lifted two weeks later following complaints from free speech groups and media organizations, including The Associated Press.
Jan Vonder Muehll, a spokesman for Julius Baer, confirmed Monday that the bank is one of the plaintiffs in the case against Elmer next week before the Zurich court. But he said the trial would focus on the earlier release of data to Swiss media, not their publication on WikiLeaks.
The 2008 shutdown saw a surge in support for WikiLeaks, which until then had been virtually unknown to a wider public. The site has managed to stay online almost continuously since, despite growing pressure on its Internet service providers following the recent publication of thousands of leaked U.S. war records and diplomatic cables.