Swiss whistleblower Elmer reveals leaked list of tax evaders includes Indians
Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer, the former senior Swiss bank executive who handed over secret banking data to Wikileaks in 2008, has revealed that the list of tax evaders he had leaked included Indian names and can be accessed by the Delhi government.
In a telephonic interview to NDTV, Elmer said his list has names of several tax evaders, including criminals and corrupt politicians from across that world and that the Indian government can request for information on its citizens.
"It's not only Americans, but also people from Africa, South America, also India," the 60-year-old said. Swiss courts have his data and are known to have shared it with German authorities.
Earlier this week, Elmer was found guilty of forgery and blackmail by a court in Zurich and was handed a 14-month suspended jail term. He however escaped conviction for breaching banking secrecy laws.
Elmer was an employee of Julius Bar, a private bank in Cayman Islands. He had described himself as a 'whistleblower' who is out to expose a system of offshore tax evasion.
However, the Swiss private bank portrays Elmer as a disgruntled former employee who is waging a personal vendetta after being fired in 2002.
When Mr Elmer was sacked in 2002 he left the bank with a ream of internal documents, a claim confirmed by Julius Baer in 2005 when it lodged a formal legal complaint against unknown persons.
The former banker has been under investigation since 2011 for giving WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange two compact discs during a news conference in London. Elmer said at the time they contained confidential data on about 2,000 offshore banking clients but later told his trial they were empty.
He is also accused of attempting to pass confidential client files to the German finance ministry in 2009.
In the past, some German states have bought data leaked from Swiss banks in order to get names of their citizens who evade taxes, but it is not clear if Elmer's case has any connection to this.
