Whistle blower plans to reveal more offshore secrets
(CNS): Rudolf Elmer, who ran the Caribbean operations of the Swiss bank Julius Baer for eight years until he was dismissed in 2002, is planning to reveal more secrets regarding tax evasion. According to The New York Times, the whistle blower is heading for Germany, where authorities are putting him up in a five-star hotel as he prepares to divulge client secrets, many of which involve the Cayman Islands where he was based. “It is a global problem, and I am only the messenger who provides the bad news, or even better, the truth,” Elmer, 54, wrote in a recent e-mail message.
“Offshore tax evasion is the biggest theft among societies and neighbour states in this world,” he added.
Lawyers and Congressional investigators who have begun to review Elmer’s claims say that his internal bank and client documents provide fresh ammunition for American authorities as they take their crackdown on offshore tax evasion beyond UBS to clients of other banks.
Elmer has given documents to the IRS that cover more than 100 trusts, dozens of companies and hedge funds, and more than 1,300 individuals from 1997 through 2002. Elmer contends that his documents detail the undisclosed role of American investment management companies in funnelling American, European and South American clients who wished to avoid taxes to Julius Baer; the backdating of documents to establish trusts and foundations used to evade taxes; and the funnelling of trades for hedge funds and private equity firms from high-tax jurisdictions through Baer entities in the Cayman Islands.
“What he has is the confirmation of something very important: that a number of other banks in the voluntary disclosure process are turning up,” his lawyer Jack Blum said, referring to 14,700 wealthy Americans, many of them UBS clients who came forward to disclose their secret accounts last year.
Nothing indicates that Julius Baer, a 120-year-old private bank, is under IRS investigation. The bank is known for intense privacy. Its board chairman, Raymond J. Baer, told shareholders last April that “the fiction of citizens being fully transparent must never become reality.”
Elmer worked for Julius Baer nearly two decades, the first 15 years in Switzerland and then as chief operating officer of Julius Baer Bank and Trust in Grand Cayman, beginning in 1994. As far as his own role in helping clients evade taxes, he said, “I didn’t realize what was going on.” Elmer said he discovered the tax evasion in 2002 and decided to expose Julius Baer’s operations.
Julius Baer denies that version of events. It contends that Elmer stole internal documents and client data around 2002, the year he was dismissed, after raising concerns about the bank in the wake of being passed over for a promotion. He moved to Mauritius a year later. “Shortly after leaving the employment of the Julius Baer Group in 2002, Cayman-based Elmer, clearly annoyed at having been dismissed and unable to secure a financial settlement to his satisfaction, engaged in a campaign to seek to discredit the Julius Baer group and certain of its clients,” the bank wrote by e-mail in December.
Category: Business
Sounds a lot like FEAR talking. No surprise there. O this is going to be good!
What a crime to rat out foreign criminals who steal from their own countries. Lets not forget why Cayman is so prosperous…
I say, come on Rudolf reveal all and name the names. I know there are quite a few high, uppity, well-to-do Caymanians who are quaking in their shoes but they only reached these lofty heights through exactly the reasons why "my hero" Rudolf is going to tell us – I cant wait!
I say to you, look back in time to see who came here and set up the law firms andbanks and management companies that people like Mr. Elmer worked for and you will see it was not Caymanians, though those same people eventually were granted Caymanian Status. Caymanians were going to see as Captains, Engineers, Chief Cooks and ABs or just plain fishing, busting their butts to earn aliving. They never had the education or exposure these adventurous tax manipulators had. In fact, they had never heard the word "tax" before. Over the years some may have caught on, but some of them got caught and spent time in US prisons for doing so. So my friend, study the past and look in the mirror. We didn’t do it, we only got the bad name for it.
What I detest most of all is that this person lived here, enjoyed my country’s hospitality, it’s peaceful atmosphere, and used my country’s good name to make a lot of money and now in his quest to destroy his previous employers, he is destroying my country’s good name. He is gone and myself and most others who live here, and who have had nothing to do with any tax evasion, tax avoidance, or any such shinanigans, will have to suffer and endure the bad reputation that he and people like him helped create in their quest to make a lot of money. I believe that he should have to pay for his crimes, as he isn’t a whistle blower, he was a very willing and now jilted participant; a key player in all of the wrong doing he now wishes to expose.
right, your country had nothing to do with it…ummh, ya, nothing to do with it other than facilitating money laundering, tax evasion, and whatever else not…
Bullcrap, Yup, and you know it if, repeat if, you have anything to do with our financial services. But a nice anti-Cayman insult. Well done. You’re a star.
It’s not the country, it is people like him who do it and use the country’s name to bring legitimacy to their actions. It was him who directed the actions of the company he worked for and the people who worked under him. Him and no one else is responsible for his actions. How can he call himself a whistleblower. He is like the fox who eats all the farmers chickens and then says that it was the farmer’s fault that he never caught him in the coop. Dispicable.
Be afraid. be very afraid.
I’m actually in the know about this situation and know the guy personally … an arrest warrant is the least of what should be issued for thisguy.. how about one-way ticket to the looney-bin. I feel certain that after 60 seconds infront of any panel of educated persons, he will be carted off to the nearest exit and shown walkin papers to Timbuktu.
"Whistleblowers" often tend to find their conscience at the same time as it is obvious that their career has reached a dead end. Funny that.
The first thing Mr. Elmer should consider doing is returning his substantial salary, numerous bonus payments, and any other perks he enjoyed whilst working in this field.
Seems ok for him to enrich himself…….
Rudolf Elmer = a woman scorned
Clearly breaching Cayman’s law is a crime and the money he is being paid for doing so is a crime. We have a proceeds of crime law that permits confiscation of the proceeds of crime. Why don’t we launch proceedings to confiscate what he is being paid……. then extradite and lock him up. Of course that would require the Attorney General to do something…. Oh well.
And when did Cayman extradite anyone? John Doucet was the first and last. Anyone from Guardian Bank where John Mathewson gave away names of 3000 investors NO .Anyone regarding First Cayman Bank NO.
Why write laws if they are not used?
"This is abolutely ridiculous!! And without merit! The gentleman is obviously seeking publicity!"
ring
"Yes sir?"
"Cancel my calendar. Forward all calls. Call the jet."
CIMA should issue arrest warrant for Mr. Elmer this is a clear voilation of international bank law. He should go to Prison.
Cayman should issue an arrest warrant for this man.
hmmm – it is a bit strange for someone to take 20 years to realize that something fishy is going on and they don’t want to be part of it. Sounds to me more like a personal issue rather than anything else…
I ONLY HOPE una believe me now when I was saying that it is not Caymanians who are secretely doing these undercover work and trying to raise havoc on the Island. Dont worry, more stories will come to bum.
Yes Miss Vargas, more stories to come but believe me, you are going to be very heart-broken when stories and names are revealed.
I couldn’t have said it any better.
Twlas
You need look at local companies that will or went into liquidation or just closed like Matrix, First Cayman Bank, Hurlstone Contruction, Indies Suites etc etc. No Caymanian involvement there?? XXXXXXX