Monday, January 24, 2011


Swiss detain banker, Assange cries foul

====================================================
GENEVA: The founder of whistleblower site WikiLeaks attacked Switzerland on Sunday for arresting a Swiss banker on suspicion of breaching banking secrecy instead of investigating the tax evasion he said he had uncovered. 

Former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer, who was found guilty of breaching bank secrecy laws over his transfer of client data to the online website Wikileaks, has been remanded in custody, press reports said on Sunday. 
The former chief operating officer at private bank Julius Baer's subsidiary in the Cayman Islands was detained on Saturday because he risks destroying evidence, his lawyer Ganden Tethong Blattner told ATS news agency. 
In an interview published in the Swiss weekly Der SonntagJulian Assange, whose website has angered Washington by releasing confidential US diplomatic cables, said Switzerland's actions were drawing renewed international attention to its controversial banking practices. 

On Friday the Swiss prosecutor's office said former banker Rudolf Elmer would be detained over the weekend after police questioned him about breaking Swiss banking secrecy laws. A judge will decide on Monday whether to remand him for longer. 

Police took Elmer into custody on January 19 after he handed computer discs to Assange for WikiLeaks at a news conference in London earlier in the week. Elmer indicated the CDs contained details of as many as 2,000 offshore bank accounts. 
"Elmer is in prison because he has revealed a criminal offshore system of tax evasion in which Swiss banks play a leading role," Assange said in an interview. 

"Instead of investigating these offshore structures and going after the tax evaders, the authorities are going after Elmer," he said. 

The newspaper, quoting Assange in German, said it had received his comments via a WikiLeaks intermediary. 

In a separate case, Elmer was also convicted on January 19 of breaching banking secrecy by passing on private client data to the tax authorities and of threatening employees at his former firm Julius Baer. 

Elmer has appealed against the court verdict. Swiss media have speculated that the secret data Elmer handed to WikiLeaks on Wednesday concerned Julius Baer operations in the Cayman Islands, where Elmer had headed its operations, and are therefore not covered by laws protecting Swiss banking secrecy.
(the times of india)
=====================================================


No comments:

Post a Comment