Why aren’t the law and order types excited?
by Linda Beale
crossposted with Ataxingmatter
“More On UBS and Whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld
The Washington correspondent for Feature Story News, Daniel Ryntjes, interviewed Bradley Birkenfeld in jail recently. You can find the audio interview and other items on the UBS banking secrecy case, at this link.
Birkenfeld says that most of the US clients were “sophisticated investors” who traveled to Switzerland expressly to set up secret accounts and take advantage of the anonymity in a bank that had been operating this business for decades: they didn’t need to talk about that motive, because everyone knew that was what the service was all about. He notes that the bankers didn’t provide the tax advice, but there were lawyers and trust officers who handled that part of the deals, including setting up Hong Kong or Singapore corporations and otherwise.
Birkenfeld, as a director at UBS with signatory power at the bank, had a base salary of about 160 thousand Swiss francs and bonuses that ultimately landed him just under a million dollars a year for his banking work. Birkenfeld claims that he saw a document not provided to employees that raised questions about the legality and ethicality of the bank’s activity in having bankers travel to the US to meet with US clients. While the activity may have been legal in Switzerland, he asked the bank to explain the issues in the US. He claimed to see a pattern in which “the bank was trying to distance itself and have a corporate cover for itself, but not for its employees.” Meanwhile, it was “compensating, training, encouraging” the employees to do those activities. When the bank declined to answer his queries, he sought outside advice and was told to resign, which he did. In his exit interview (with human resources and other officials), he argued that he should get an answer to those questions.
While on leave, he wrote the bank stating his concern about violations. An investigation commenced, which he saw as a cover-up. Based on this, he traveled to the US and met clandestinely with the DOJ, SEC, IRS and the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations to testify about the bank’s activities, “out of pure principle”, he says. So he took on the largest bank in the world about the “largest in US history” tax scandal, and now says he wonders why the DOJ had not acted on this issue beforehand. He also thinks that he shouldn’t have gone to the DOJ, since he ultimately was prosecuted after sharing, he claims, information with them about the bank. He says the DOJ is “incompetent”, and using the KPMG case as the example, in which the judge concluded that failure to provide financial support for expensive legal counsel was a violation of the tax evasion promoting defendants’ constitutional rights to counsel. (I find that conclusion highly dubious, but it is the result of the case.)
Birkenfeld sees himself as the victim–the only person in prison after the exposure of UBS. The interviewer notes that he was, in fact, breaking the law for the four years that he worked at UBS pursuing these criminal acts. He notes that there are thousands of Americans who took advantage of the UBS practice who are NOT in jail, and he is not satisfied with the job done by DOJ with the information provided. He notes that the “kingpin” knew all 25,000 clients, but the DOJ failed to extract all of those names because of the deal they made with UBS for a mere 4500. They gave the “kingpin” immunity and he pled the Fifth at the Senate, then they released him in August 2008 while the Senate was on recess. Birkenfeld had a long prison sentence, and no other person in the scandal, so Birkenfeld thinks this will discourage whistleblowers from exposing these kinds of criminal acts in the future. They have prosecuted very few of the names they got early on, so he notes it will take them a long time to prosecute the additional 4500 names.
There is more to the interview, and more in the other links. Enjoy. [hat tip to Daniel Ryntjes]
“…so Birkenfeld thinks this will discourage whistleblowers from exposing these kinds of criminal acts in the future. “
Yep, he’s right about that.
“They have prosecuted very few of the names they got early on, so he notes it will take them a long time to prosecute the additional 4500 names.”
Obama’s DOJ at its finest!
He was making a cool 160K Swiss Franks plus bonus that were 5-6 times more boosting his income to jsu shy 1 million+ Swiss Franks, bascially now outside publicly complains (did he think that he was going to be immune? hell he was the perfect fall-guy from what I read) He even admits he was breaking the law for 4 years at the tune of 1,000,000 Swiis Franks/year and expects to have everyone pat him on the back? Sounds like a Gordon Gecko to me…
Why doesn’t he release the 4500 names and documents to Wikileaks? Let the the press do the dirty work??
If your going to kill the King you get one chance – don’t blow it.
Islam will change
STR,
Yep, becuase the people on that list are “Very Important People” for both the Dems and Reps. So the DOJ is not going to go after people who they may want to work for in the future. Only way this will chnage is for the relase of the names publically and the documents backing it up. Considering the number of rich people in the Congress I wonder how many POLSs are named???
Yes Birkenfeld got screwed. When you try to kill the King and fail its usually not a good result for the conspirators…
Islam will change
Islma will change
Linda:
I believe you know by know, the trial is over once the plea bargain is made. I would offer up as an example the recent case of a former attorney in Ann Arbor who was arrested in Livingston County with his mule in possession of 50 grams of cocaine and driving on a suspended state license. http://www.courthouseforum.com/forums/view.php?id=1052724 He was released with no bond and his mule jailed. Later on his mule went to prison for 1.5 years to 15 years and he was paroled.
This came after alleged attorney was charged with running a drug house, using his mule to obtain drugs and providing her with the money to do so, and contributing to the death of another within his apartment. The outcome is a plea bargain down from a potential life sentence to a maximum of 23 months in prison. Mind you, this man took the fees from ~500 clients and failed to do anything on their cases. Mean while the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission did nothing with Plunkett other than suspend him for 2 years.
From 2002 onwards this man was called honorable by the Livingston County Court and Prosecutors. The day he was paroled in Livingston County, the bailiffs and other attorneys and court officials were all so sympathetic while he fluttered around with his copy of Maughams “Razor’s Edge” asking if others had read it. Instant academy award should have been given. Bubbly until he saw me and reality sunk in because he knew I knew his act was a fraud.
Court is a wonderful place for which both the AnnArborist (Bev) and I can confirm its duplicity with pursuing true public criminals. He was one of them very much akin to the 2500 or so UBS secret account holders. Most will escape prosecution or will plea bargain to a much less penalty than desrved. For the rest of us, justice will be meaded out with little regard for your stature in the community.
I think the greatest white collar crime of the century was bailing out the TBTF banks and AIG.
In addition, keeping interest rates low benefited the banks, for they were slowly able to replenish their reserves at the expense of the average citizens’ savings. They did this by borrowing at .25% and investing in Treasuries at 2.5%.
It used to be that knowledge was power.
Now, money is power and knowledge is good for its own sake.
But, don’t expect knowledge to make you a lot of money, or even feel powerful (assuming your financial resources are relatively constrained).
Don Levit