Rudolf Elmer

Rudolf Elmer (born 1955/1956) is a former employee of the Swiss bank Julius Bär. He worked for the bank for close to two decades, and in his last position, he managed the bank's Caribbean operations for eight years until his dismissal in 2002. He came to prominence as a whistleblower in 2008 when he gave secret documents to detailing the activities of Julius Bär in the Cayman Islands and its role in alleged tax evasion. Before that, he had been arrested in 2005 and held for 30 days.

According to US tax authorities, when it was discovered that internal data had been stolen, the bank required every employee to 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 traded a Swiss business newspaper cash for a CD with 169 megabytes of customer data but was arrested shortly afterwards in Zurich due to the suspicion of his violation of Swiss banking secrecy. He sat 30 days in custody. Soon after his parole he started a website for whistleblowers.

Elmer moved temporarily to Mauritius but since January 2010 has lived in the Canton of Zurich. The ‘’Journal of International Tax Review’’ both in 2011 and 2012 listed him among the 50 individuals and organizations that had the biggest influence on international tax affairs.

At a press conference hosted by Alternative List, Elmer gave a report entitled To throw light on the dark side: He said:

I am a critic of offshore business by banks and multinational companies. Offshore centres have multiplied since the 1960s to the present, increasing from 10 to 80. Trusts as in the laws of Commonwealth countries are – despite being legal – illegitimate. Privacy protection is important for banking and I am not against bank secrecy but companies abuse this secrecy. I have never received money from tax authorities. I want to change the system.

According to Der Spiegel and the Swiss television documentary show "Rundschau", on 2 March 2008, Elmer accused his bank of evading taxes in Switzerland by declaring bank work to have been carried out in the Cayman Islands, whereas the work was actually done in Switzerland.

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Wikipedia