An artice in the business section reports “Ex-Banker Gives Data on Taxes to WikiLeaks” reports “A former senior Swiss bank executive said on Monday that he had given the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, details of more than 2,000 prominent individuals and companies that he contends engaged in tax evasion and other possible criminal activity.
“Rudolf M. Elmer, who ran the Caribbean operations of the Swiss bank Julius Baer for eight years until he was dismissed in 2002, refused to identify any of the individuals or companies, but he told reporters at a news conference that about 40 politicians and ‘pillars of society’ were among them…”
WATCHDOG: We initially shared the sense of outrage when Assange published secret documents concerning the activities of the U. S. government. Time will tell whether he was right and we were wrong.
But we are deeply grateful to Assange for making public the information concerning all of the very wealthy individuals and corporations who are evading American tax laws and laws of other countries by concealing their wealth in Swiss and Cayman Island bank accounts.
The Swiss bankers have played a contemptible role in facilitating the rich in their robbing of the middle class and the poor. (The Swiss banker’s lack of morality was evidenced by how they exploited their Jewish clients during the Holocaust, for which they have reluctantly paid reparations.)
Perhaps disclosures of the wide scale tax evasion of prominent individuals and corporations will add credence to reports of the corruption of a large and affluent segment of U. S. society. If nothing else, it will give pause to potential tax dodgers.
