WikiLeaks promises to reveal Swiss banking secrets
By the CNN Wire Staffc/div>
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* NEW: About 2,000 client records are handed over
* WikiLeaks could publish the documents within weeks, Julian Assange says
* Rudolf Elmer says he has a right to stand up if he sees something wrong
* Elmer and Assange are fighting Swiss banking secrecy
London (CNN) -- 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.
Speaking at the same news conference, lawyer Jack Blum said it was not always
possible to determine who, if anyone, had engaged in "criminal tax evasion."
Elmer aims to "challenge Swiss Bank Secrecy at the European Court of Human
Rights and the Swiss courts," he says on his website. He has worked at six
offshore banking centers, he says.
He has been engaged in a long-running battle with Swiss banks over secrecy, he
said.
He said he had approached tax authorities and universities with his data, but
that no one was interested. He was about to give up, he said, when he learned
about WikiLeaks from a friend.
He said he was "grateful" to WikiLeaks for helping him "send the message which
I wanted to send," but that he was not trying to use it for "protection" as he
faced prosecution.
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© 2008 Cable News Network.
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