A former Swiss Bank executive, Rudolf Elmer empowered Whistleblower WikiLeaks by rendering two CDs containing details of more than 2000 Swiss bank accounts. During a press conference in London on Jan 17, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed, "He (Elmer) is clearly a bona fide whistleblower...We have some kind of duty to support him in that matter." The ex-banker in his reply stated that the disks contain proof that 40 politicians and several multinational companies are guilty of tax evasion. However, Assange also confirmed that the website will expose the truth after verifying all data that the CDs contained. Elmer, who worked for Julius Bar, is one of the first whistleblowers who supplied his client secret data to Wikileaks in 2007 and he will face trial in Switzerland on Jan 19 over the issue of transfering data to the whistleblower.
Tax cheats using Switzerland's secretive banks to hide assets from their home countries could be exposed by WikiLeaks. And wealthy Canadians evading the taxman here by burying undisclosed assets and income in offshore accounts should be "quaking in their boots," according to a law professor at Queen's University. The whistle-blowing web-based organization WikiLeaks received information Monday from a disgraced former Swiss banker about 2,000 shady Swiss bank accounts.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who himself is hiding out in Britain to avoid sex assault charges in Sweden, accepted at least one CD worth of information at a press conference Monday. He said it could be several weeks before any of the revealing information would be released. The accounts are reportedly believed to belong largely to American, British and Asian "rich and famous" individuals and corporations. But there could be information about wealthy Canadians using Swiss banks to hide assets from the federal government, too. Art Cockfield, a law professor at Queen's who specializes in international tax law, said recent developments exposing tax havens such as Switzerland and Liechtenstein have opened Canadians' eyes to the problem of tax cheats here. As for WikiLeaks spilling the beans about tax cheats, Canadian or otherwise, there's very little sympathy for them or their privacy, Cockfield said. "But the problem is the WikiLeaks documents may also reveal legal tax planning by wealthy Canadian individuals. There are other reasons why people use tax havens - like Switzerland," he said. "And they don't want their personal information made public, like how much money they have. Often, there are security concerns." In 2003, Statistics Canada reported some $88 billion was buried in tax havens by wealthy Canadians and corporations. Recently, the CRA was tipped off about some 100 Canadian accounts in tiny Liechtenstein, a notorious tax haven, where reportedly $20 million in tax revenue had been evaded. Since those accounts were discovered, about $5 million has been paid back and no charges have been laid against the tax cheats. Canadians are believed to hold thousands of offshore accounts with HSBC and the Swiss bank UBS, both of which recently came under fire for sheltering tax cheats following information that was leaked to German and U.S. authorities. In 2010, the CRA collected more than $33 million from Canadians who stepped forward to admit they had money in offshore accounts with those two banks.
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