WikiLeaks promises to reveal Swiss banking secrets (IRS must be ecstatic at Assange's help)

CNN ^ | 01/17/2011 | CNN Wire Staff

[SeekAndFind]

A Swiss whistle-blower Monday handed over what he said were secret Swiss banking records to WikiLeaks, the website dedicated to revealing secrets.

Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer handed two discs to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a news conference in London.

WikiLeaks could release the secret Swiss banking records in "a matter of weeks" if it can process them quickly enough, Assange said.

Elmer said he would not reveal the names in the records and said he was unable to say how many people were involved.

He said about 2,000 clients' records were included, but that because of the way trusts and corporations are set up, he could not determine how many individuals were involved.

Elmer describes himself as an activist/reformer/banker.

"I think, as a banker, I do have the right to stand up if something is wrong," he said Monday, explaining why he was giving the documents to the website.

Elmer is due to go on trial Wednesday in Switzerland for violating the country's banking secrecy regulations.

He said he wanted "to let society know what I do know and how this system works because it is damaging our society in the way that money is moved" and hidden in offshore jurisdictions.

He began looking into the issue when he was a banker in the Cayman Islands, he said.

When he first looked into the problems of offshore banking he said it looked like "a mouse tail," but as he investigated in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, it became a "dragon's tail," and finally a many-headed dragon.

[Rockitz]

In other news, Julian Assange has just announced that Wikileaks has secured an anonymous donation that will allow it to stay in business for the next 40 years.

[pnh102]

I’ll bet now that the US government will see WikiLeaks as its “bestest friend evar!”

[pnh102]

We DO need laws that require public scrutiny of our elected representatives cell phone records, emails, snail mails, textings, wire-transfers and other electronic documents.

I'd love to see that. If it was a perfect world, then every phone that is paid for by a US taxpayer that is used by a public official, even their own personal cell phones, as we pay those salaries and no one is forcing them to serve in office, would be set to record every conversation, for any citizen to download and listen to.

[CutePuppy]

And when Wall Street types like Rahm Emanuel leave govt --- we need to have a law that requires ex-govt employees to submit all of their communications records and electronic documents to the Congress, GAO, IRS, FEC, etc etc etc......

Probably better to check all "government types" (elected and "civil servants") when they are in and when they leave the government for cushy jobs on Wall Street, K Street and other "streets", as "bankers," "lawyers," directors of corporate boards, lobbyists, etc. (Jamie Gorelick, Franklin Raines et al) who use the personal ties and deliberately complex laws and loopholes as the entrance to the revolving door between Big Government and Big Business, for their own and their political masters' profit.

[newnhdad]

I wonder if the regime sends him a paycheck?

[Syncro]

Great info, thanks Matchett!