Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Swiss view UBS whistleblower Birkenfeld's $104 million reward as 'provocation'

News of the $104 million reward handed to UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld by American authorities was greeted in Switzerland with a mixture of shock, surprise, indignation and resignation.

Birkenfeld, a former Geneva employee of the Swiss bank, was granted the record sum by the Internal Revenue Service for providing inside information about UBS’s illegal schemes to enable tax evasion by American citizens, according to the Washington-based National Whistleblowers Center.

The 47-year-old former employee is credited with providing information that forced UBS to pay a $780 million penalty and provide the names of 4,900 American clients to US authorities.

This also sparked a tax dispute between the US and Switzerland that continues to dog relations between the two countries.

Birkenfeld’s handsome reward was branded a “massive provocation against Switzerland,” by Pirmin Bischof, a Christian Democratic Party MP and a lawyer who studied in the US.

 The country would respond “appropriately by remaining calm”, he said. Full story...

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