Legal
CDs Sent By Ex-Julius Baer Banker To WikiLeaks Held No Secret Data
Two computer discs that a former banker at Julius Baer gave to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that contributed to his arrest days later contained no secret banking data at all, Reuters reported, citing two of the banker’s associates.
At a widely covered news conference in London in January, Rudolf Elmer, former head of the Cayman Islands office of Julius Baer, gave Assange what he said were two discs containing information on about 2,000 offshore banking clients. Elmer subsequently returned to Switzerland, where authorities in Zurich Canton detained him.
When Elmer was arrested, Zurich police and prosecutors issued a joint statement saying they were “checking to see whether Rudolf Elmer has violated Swiss banking law by handing the CD(s) over to WikiLeaks.”
But two of Elmer’s associates who were present at the London news conference now say the discs Elmer handed over to Assange contained no confidential banking data, the news agency said.
Julius Baer declined to comment when contacted by this publication.
In the past, WealthBriefing has attempted to contact WikiLeaks about its actions but has received no response beyond an acknowledgement of contact. Elmer’s alleged transfer of client account details came at a time when Swiss-based banks, such as HSBC in Geneva, had suffered the loss of thousands of private bank account details. The German government has paid for information that had been stolen from a private bank in Switzerland, highlighting the determination of some governments to hunt down alleged tax evaders.
Elmer was convicted by a Swiss court yesterday of coercion and breaching bank secrecy, media reports said. He was fined SFr7,200 (around $7,517). The “whistleblower”, who was fired as the head of the bank’s Cayman Islands trust business in late 2002, had been brought before the court due to threats he had made against the bank and its staff.
The Reuters report on the CDs said that Martin Woods, a former Scotland Yard detective and bank compliance officer who helped put Elmer into contact with WikiLeaks and to organize the news conference, said Assange told him months ago that the discs contained no bank secrets.
Assange “said to me one disc was blank and the other disc had no banking information on it whatsoever,” Woods reportedly said.
