Swiss tax whistleblower Rudolf M. Elmer, who exposed the inner workings of offshore tax evasion schemes at Julius Baer, is cooperating with authorities from his 5-start hotel room.
This is encouraging treatment for a bank secrets whistleblower.
It is also sadly inconsistent. As of a week and a half ago, the government is paying room and board at a federal prison for American Bradley Birkenfeld, the biggest tax whistleblower in history.
There are numerous similarities between Elmer and Birkenfeld: both blew the whistle on multi-million dollar tax evasion schemes; both worked for prominent Swiss banks (Birkenfeld for UBS, Elmer for Julius Baer); both left their banks under contentious circumstances; and both came forward with valuable information exposing bank secrecy and offshore tax evasion. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has already recovered $780 million in fines using information Birkenfeld handed over.
The biggest difference between these two whistleblowers seems to be their nationalities: Birkenfeld is American, Elmer is Swiss.
Elmer's good treatment stems supposedly from an IRS and Department of Justice (DOJ) strategy of
"it takes a rogue to catch a thief" to encourage insiders who engaged in wrongdoing to reveal the secrets of their employers
Where was this strategy when DOJ refused to give Birkenfeld immunity for handing them the biggest tax evasion case in history? Where was this strategy when DOJ made false statements leading to a harsh sentence at Birkenfeld's sentencing hearing?
Moreover, those who read my diary know that Birkenfeld is hardly the worst "rogue." He blew the whistle internally for years at UBS before resigning in protest, and then voluntarily brought the entire UBS scandal to U.S. authorities. Birkenfeld was recently named "Person of the Year" by non-profit Tax Analysts in recognition of his contributions.
Yet while Swiss citizen Elmer enjoys the room service of a 5-star hotel and well-placed gratitude of U.S. tax authorities, American citizen Birkenfeld, in what the Atlantic contributor Andrew Cohen calls one of "The five worst law-related moves by the Obama White House and Justice Department," sits in a federal jail.
ACTION: To request clemency for Birkenfeld, or just to request that the Justice Department investigate the multiple instances of prosecutorial mishandling of his case, go here:
http://www.capwiz.com/...