Rudolf Elmer is the most well-known of Swiss whistleblowers
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A Swiss banker who worked with WikiLeaks to blow the whistle on offshore banking practices was fined at a Zurich court on Monday, escaping a jail term after breaking Swiss banking secrecy laws.
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Rudolf Elmer was a senior executive at Julius Baer until he was fired in 2002. In 2007, he passed on information to the WikiLeaks website that he claimed showed his former employer set up trust funds and other banking constructs to help clients evade taxes through offshore accounts.
In 2011, he staged a press conference in London where he passed on more information to the site and its now well-known founder, Julian Assange, before being convicted of breaking secrecy laws for the first time. At the time, Elmer said the two CDs he handed over contained confidential information on around 2,000 offshore banking clients.
The second trial, which ended on Monday, found him guilty of breaking banking secrecy laws and forging documents but cleared him of charges related to the two data CDs.
The court concluded it had not been proven that the information on the discs was truly secret.
Although the Federal Prosecutor’s Office had called for a jail term of over three years, plus a ban on working in the banking industry, the Zurich court sentenced Elmer to a fine of CHF45,000 ($52,097) with conditions and ordered him to pay court costs of around CHF25,000.
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Elmer trial highlights whistleblowing dilemma
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The Swiss whistleblowing debate has ratcheted up a few notches with the new court appearance of notorious former banker Rudolf Elmer.
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The trial of an ex-banker accused of breaching Swiss banking secrecy laws by handing over confidential data about offshore clients to WikiLeaks was stopped on Wednesday after the defendant collapsed.
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The former Julius Bär banker had been in police custody since January 19, after he handed over computer discs to WikiLeaks which he said contained details of as many as 2,000 offshore bank accounts. On Monday, a friend of Elmer confirmed weekend news reports that he had been released three weeks ago. Elmer’s release follows reports…
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The arrest by Zurich police on Wednesday followed Elmer’s appearance in a Zurich court, in which he was hit with a SFr7,200 ($7,500) suspended fine. He was found guilty of threatening his former employer and breaking Swiss secrecy laws. In a widely reported event on Monday he handed over two CDs to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange…
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Elmer’s public show of defiance drew the battle lines against the Zurich cantonal prosecutor, who will also attempt to prove in court that the former Swiss banker tried to defraud his ex-employer, Julius Bär bank. On Monday, Elmer handed over two CDs to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in front of the world’s media. Elmer claims…
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Rudolf Elmer, a former employee of Bank Julius Bär, said the account holders included “high net worth” celebrities, business leaders and lawmakers from the United States, Britain and Asia. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, appeared with Elmer in London to collect the files, and praised the ex-banker’s attempts to expose alleged shady practices in…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.