Wikileaks: a former banker convicted for violation of banking secrecy

The former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer, who presented repeatedly to the site Wikileaks data sharing information on suspected tax evaders, was convicted Wednesday, January 19, violation of banking secrecy, and was sentenced to a suspended fine. Mr. Elmer, who was one of the leaders of the Baer bank in the Cayman Islands for eight years, was accused of sending client names to media and the Swiss tax authorities, after being dismissed by his employer in 2002 one of the leading Swiss private bank, due to "disagreements".

He took with him numerous internal documents before leaving the facility. Aged 55 years, Elmer was the first to use the website Wikileaks to disseminate private bank records. Monday, Rudolf Elmer had delivered to the site co-founder, Julian Assange, CDs containing information on 2,000 customers of the bank Baer.

"The ethics of business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, I was disappointed," he said before the judge, saying he wanted to expose to light illegal banking transactions in the Cayman Islands tax haven and British Caribbean islands. ANONYMOUS EMAILS Rudolf Elmer Baer said that the bank had persecuted him and his family, and had tried to buy his silence 500 000 Swiss francs (about 390,000 euros).

The former banker has also ensured he was never paid in exchange for disclosure of the secret data. He however admitted that he wrote anonymous e-mails in 2005, in which he threatened to disclose customer data to tax authorities and media if Julius Baer could not stop with certain behaviors vis-à-vis its employees.

Also grateful to the Swiss tax authorities have disclosed information regarding tax avoidance, however, he denied being the author of a bomb threat against the headquarters of the Zurich bank Julius Baer, as he threatened an employee of the bank and having tried to blackmail the hotel. According Ganden Tethong Blattner, Rudolf Elmer lawyer, his client "is a man who discovered the embezzlement and was placed under continuous surveillance for over a year.

These pressures were intended to silence him." Baer says the bank's side as Elmer conducted "a campaign of intimidation and personal vendetta" against the establishment when it rejected her claims of severance pay after his dismissal.

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• Swiss re-arrest ex-banker for giving data to WikiLeaks (19/01/2011)

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