Rudolf Elmer employer Julius Baer Group
Rudolf Elmer (born 1 November 1955) is a Swiss private banker, whistleblower, and activist. He worked as a banker at Julius Bär from the 1980s to his dismissal in 2002. At this time, he was head of the bank's Caribbean operations for eight years. In 2005 he was arrested by Zürich authorities and held for 30 days as Swiss authorities alleged he unsuccessful attempted to disclose client information .
In 2008, Elmer allegedly disclosed confidential bank documents to WikiLeaks detailing the activities of Julius Bär in the Cayman Islands and its role in alleged tax evasion. In January 2011, he was convicted in Switzerland of breaching the country's secrecy laws. He was rearrested immediately thereafter for having again distributed illegally obtained data to WikiLeaks. Julius Bär as well as select Swiss and German newspapers alleges that Elmer has doctored evidence to suggest the bank engaged in tax evasion.Julius Bär
Elmer was hired by Swiss bank Julius Bär during the early 1980s as a private banker in their Zürich offices. He worked at the bank as a private banker throughout the 1980s and 1990s before leading the bank's Caribbean operations from 1994 to 2002. In late 2001, Julius Bär internal security discovered that internal data had been stolen and required that every employee take a lie detector test for involvement. Elmer did not take the test the first time around due to his health and then later failed. He was then released from employment on these grounds, although he was still in possession of backup copies of data. According to the bank it was "data theft committed with criminal intent". After his resignation, he sent documents to various media, whereupon the bank called for an investigation of him and his family. In 2005, Elmer sold a Swiss business newspaper a CD with 169 megabytes of customer data, but was arrested shortly afterwards in Zurich on suspicion of violating Swiss banking secrecy law. He sat 30 days in custody. Soon after his parole he started a website for whistleblowers.On 3 March 2008 the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that Elmer was the source of documents that appeared some weeks earlier on WikiLeaks; Der Spiegel referred to them as partly authentic and partly fake. A California judge had the service provider of WikiLeaks block the site's domain (wikileaks.org) on behalf of Julius Bär on 18 February 2008. According Swiss television documentary show Rundschau, Elmer accused his bank of evading taxes by declaring bank work to have been carried out in the Cayman Islands, whereas the work was actually done in Switzerland. In 2008, Elmer released internal bank documents with customer data and other sensitive details to the Wikileaks website. According to these allegations, Julius Bär held their customers funds by funneling through investment frameworks of offshore accounts to increase profits for themselves and circumvent the Swiss tax authorities. Julius Bär denied this in a statement saying that all of its activities in the Cayman Islands were legal and did not violate of Swiss banking regulations. On 17 January 2011, Elmer met with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks at a press conference at London's Frontline Club to hand over two disks in public view of reporters. The records included information on 2000 account holders and came from three financial institutions, including Julius Bär. Assange said the data would be reviewed and published in full. A month later, Elmer stated in court that the disks were empty and thus contained no bank customer data.
boss supervisor manager chief director