Friday 4 August 2017

20 Indians, including politicians, movie stars have Swiss accounts: Whistleblower

If Federal Court rules in his favour, Rudolf Elmer would release data from Julius Baer bank

Julius Baer Bank, Swiss Bank, Switzerland

In the quiet village of Rorbas, just outside Zurich, Rudolf M. Elmer has been fighting a 12-year-long legal battle against the centuries-old traditions of Swiss banking secrecy. Elmer, who ran the Caribbean operations of the Swiss bank, Julius Baer, for eight years before being dismissed in 2002, was part of the first wave of Swiss bank whistleblowers who helped expose the inner workings of a system that helped the world’s rich and multi-nationals conglomerates evade billions of dollars in taxes through offshore financial structures and tax havens.

In 2011, he was tried for sharing information about tax evasion, money laundering and other financial violations with US tax authorities and WikiLeaks. Over the past six years, Elmer has been imprisoned for 200 days, some of it in solitary confinement, and has fended off an orchestrated harassment campaign against his family...

 #Economypolicy


Edited excerpts:It’s been 15 years since you left Julius Baer and since then we’ve seen more whistleblowers, leaking greater amounts of data on illicit global financial flows. But we’ve also seen some international cooperation over cracking down on tax evasion. How much have things changed?

Well, the question is have things really changed? It looks like to the man on the street that there is a lot of change going on in favour of the public over the last 15 years. In my view, generally speaking, yes there is a lot of talk. But actually not that much has changed, to be crystal clear....

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