$104 Million UBS Informer Tells Swiss to Back Whistleblowers
- Ex-UBS banker Birkenfeld won record IRS award in 2012
- Draft Swiss law would force staff to go first to employer
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Bradley Birkenfeld, the banker awarded $104 million by the U.S. for revealing how he helped UBS Group AG hide assets for rich Americans, has a message for Swiss lawmakers wrangling over the draft of the nation’s first whistleblowing law: “stop living in the past.”
Birkenfeld won a record Internal Revenue Service whistleblower award in 2012 after serving most of a 40-month sentence for his part in the tax-evasion schemes. His testimony, in contravention of Swiss banking secrecy, triggered a U.S. probe that’s reaped more than $5 billion in penalties from wealth managers in the Alpine country.