Former Swiss banker arrested in Wiki Leaks case

Swiss police arrested Rudolf Elmer, a former executive of the Swiss bank Julius Baer, on 19 January 2011, hours after he was found guilty of breaching Swiss bank secrecy laws for disclosing private client data and of threatening an employee at Julius Baer.

At a news conference in London on 17 January, Elmer, who ran the Cayman Islands branch of the Swiss bank until he was sacked in 2002, handed over data on many of Baer’s offshore bank account holders to Wiki Leaks’ founder Julian Assange, saying he wanted to draw attention to financial abuses.

“The state prosecutor’s office is checking to see whether Rudolf Elmer has violated Swiss banking law by handing the CD over to Wiki Leaks,” the Zurich cantonal police and state prosecutor said in a joint statement. They declined to give further details.

Earlier, the court sentenced Elmer to a fine of 7,200 Swiss francs ($7,505), suspended for two years. The prosecution had demanded a sentence of eight months jail and a fine of 2,000 francs. But the Court acquitted Elmer of charges that he had sought $50,000 for returning client data to Julius Baer and that he had made a bomb threat to the bank’s headquarters.

Elmer, who helped bring Wiki Leaks to prominence three years ago when he used the Website to publish secret client details, had admitted sending data to tax authorities. But he denied blackmail and a bomb threat against Julius Baer and said he had never taken payments in return for secret data.

“I am a critic of the system and want to tell society what happens in these murky oases,” Elmer said before the verdict. Elmer said Baer had waged a campaign against him and his family and offered him 500,000 francs to keep quiet.

Julius 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. “We have supported the prosecution, the judge largely followed the prosecutor’s argument,” said Kurt Langhard, a lawyer for Julius Baer. “We are satisfied.”