Swiss police have arrested a banker who claims to have handed details of rich tax cheats to WikiLeaks, prosecutors said yesterday.
Rudolf Elmer was arrested late on Wednesday shortly a Zurich court found him guilty of coercion — threatening an employee at his former firm Julius Baer — and breaking Switzerland’s strict bank secrecy laws in an earlier case.
“He is in police detention and will be questioned today,” Zurich chief prosecutor Peter Pellegrini said.
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Pellegrini said the new probe centers on Elmer’s trip to London on Monday, at which the former banker gave two data CDs to WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange during a press conference. The CDs reportedly contained data on hundreds of offshore bank account holders. Elmer says he wants to expose a widespread system of tax evasion by rich businesspeople and politicians using offshore branches of Swiss banks.
In the earlier case, Elmer was handed a fine of more than 7,200 Swiss francs (US$7,500), suspended for two years. The prosecution had demanded eight months jail and a fine of 2,000 francs.
Judge Sebastian Aeppli acquitted Elmer on charges he sought US$50,000 for returning client data to Baer and that he made a bomb threat to the bank’s headquarters.
Elmer, who helped bring WikiLeaks to prominence three years ago when he used it to publish secret client details, had admitted sending Baer data to tax authorities.
He, however, denied blackmail and a bomb threat against Baer and said he never took payments in return for secret data.
Elmer spent a month in investigative custody in 2005 when the charges were first made against him.
“I am a critic of the system and want to tell society what happens in these murky oases,” Elmer, who ran the Cayman Islands branch of the Swiss bank until he was fired in 2002, told a news conference before the verdict.
Elmer said Baer waged a campaign of “psychoterror” against him and his family and offered him 500,000 francs to keep quiet. He said he had never taken payments in return for secret data.
However, he admitted writing anonymous e-mails in 2005 threatening to send client details to tax authorities and the media if Baer did not stop unspecified actions.
“The situation was very threatening. We were very scared and I thought the bank was behind it. That is why I sent the e-mails,” Elmer told the court.
Elmer also admitted charges that he sent client details to Swiss tax authorities, but he denied threats against former colleagues.
Baer, which has denied its Cayman branch was used for tax dodging, says Elmer waged a “campaign of personal intimidation and vendetta” against the bank after it refused his demands for financial compensation following his 2002 dismissal.
Speaking in court, Prosecutor Alexandra Bergmann said Elmer had cultivated the image of whistleblower only later in his dispute with Baer.
“While he was working on the Cayman Islands he didn’t question the system as such,” she said.
Elmer’s lawyer Ganden Tethong Blattner said her client and his family had paid for standing up to a powerful opponent.
About a dozen protesters from the left-wing Alternative Liste party had gathered outside the court, holding up a banner, saying: “They want to hang Rudi, they let Kaspar off the hook,” in a reference to UBS chairman Kaspar Villiger.
Switzerland last year gave details of about 4,450 UBS accounts to US authorities as part of a deal to settle a tax probe into its biggest bank despite strict secrecy laws. None of its bankers were prosecuted in Switzerland.
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