Once-jailed banker gets $104 million whistleblower payout

[jimmy olsen]

WTF!? That's a crazy award. At least 100 times too much.

http://bottomline.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/11/13804631-once-jailed-banker-gets-104-million-whistleblower-payout?lite

By Eamon Javers, cnbc.com

Attorneys for jailed former Swiss banker Bradley Birkenfeld announced Tuesday that the IRS will pay him $104 million as a whistleblower reward for information he turned over to the US government.

The information Birkenfeld revealed detailed the inner workings of the secretive private wealth management division of the Swiss bank UBS, where the American-born Birkenfeld helped his US clients evade taxes by hiding wealth overseas.

At one point during his private banking career, Birkenfeld reportedly brought diamonds across the US border secured inside a toothpaste tube.

Tuesday's announcement represents an astonishing turn of fortune for Birkenfeld, who was released from federal prison in August after serving 31 months on charges relating to his efforts to help a wealthy client avoid taxes.

He is currently under home confinement in New Hampshire. The terms of his probation prevented Birkenfeld from attending the press conference announcing his windfall.

Birkenfeld attorney Stephen Kohn said the information the former Swiss banker turned over to the IRS led directly to the $780 million fine paid to the US by his former employer, UBS, as well as leading over 35,000 taxpayers to participate in amnesty programs to voluntarily repatriate their illegal offshore accounts. Kohn said that resulted in the collection of over $5 billion dollars in back taxes, fines and penalties that otherwise would have remained outside the reach of the government.

CNBC.com: Feds talking "The Cure"

Birkenfeld's disclosures also led to the first cracks in the legendarily secretive Swiss banking system, and ultimately the Swiss government changed its tax treaty with the United States. UBS turned over the names of more than than 4,900 U.S. taxpayers who held illegal offshore accounts. Investigations into those accounts are ongoing.

In an interview with CNBC conducted in federal prison in 2011, Birkenfeld emphasized the value he had as an insider: "I knew the other bankers. I knew the other banks. And I knew the headhunters," Birkenfeld said at the time. "So, I knew exactly who was doing this business."

Under the IRS whistleblower program which was revamped in 2006, informants are entitled to a percentage of the dollars recovered by the US government when fraud is exposed.

This decision is expected to send a message to other potential informants that there is money, potentially big money, in turning to the government.

[DGuller]

One million dollar payout wouldn't make the news and entice other bankers to snitch.  Besides, even $100 million is peanuts compared to total amount we expropriated.

[Martinus]

WTF!? That's a crazy award. At least 100 times too much.

Are you an idiot? How would 1 million serve as an incentive for a lifetime career-terminating move (not to mention, probably finding himself on a hit list or a dozen) for someone who earns several times that over a year.

[Jaron]

h-h-hitlist?

[jimmy olsen]

Well if I was in charge there would much more severe penalties for these sorts of crimes, so a plea deal with a reduced sentence would be quite an inducement for this fellow.

[Martinus]

Well if I was in charge there would much more severe penalties for these sorts of crimes, so a plea deal with a reduced sentence would be quite an inducement for this fellow.

Good that you are not in charge, you fucking idiot. Such "crimes" are notoriously difficult to discover without insider knowledge and often are in the grey area of legality, so severe penalties would be neither fair nor they would act as a deterrent. Seriously, you are probably the most imbecilic person I know - so full of idiocy, I sometimes want to strangle you with my bare hands or smash your face in with a sledge hammer.

[Jaron]

Well if I was in charge there would much more severe penalties for these sorts of crimes, so a plea deal with a reduced sentence would be quite an inducement for this fellow.

Good that you are not in charge, you fucking idiot. Such "crimes" are notoriously difficult to discover without insider knowledge and often are in the grey area of legality, so severe penalties would be neither fair nor they would act as a deterrent. Seriously, you are probably the most imbecilic person I know - so full of idiocy, I sometimes want to strangle you with my bare hands or smash your face in with a sledge hammer.

LOL, someones on the rag.

[Eddie Teach]

h-h-hitlist?

Dead men have a hard time testifying in court.

[Jaron]

That seems silly. If someone is committing tax crimes, surely there should be evidence more substantial than an individuals testimony.

I'm sure Martinus would agree with me, were he not busy fantasizing about hammers and Timmy's face.

[Eddie Teach]

Even if that's true, there's also the angle of revenge. You send a guy to jail or cost him hundreds of millions of dollars, he won't be too happy with you.

[Jaron]

It is true, and this 'revenge' angle is just something that happens in movies and naive Polish "lawyers" fantasies. Most likely, the involved parties commit suicide, at which point murdering people out of spite because a futile gesture.

[Eddie Teach]

Yeah, what about that fellow who offed his ex-boss at the Empire State Building last month(and caused the NYPD to shoot a bunch of random bystanders)? Was that just something from a movie?

[Jaron]

This is way different. You're talking about mental instability, I'm talking about rationally planned out vengeance killing for whistle blowing. Yes, we all know individuals crack and shoot up their source of angst: schools, work places, the home of an ex-spouse.

But putting people on a hit list because they blew a whistle*? No, that is far fetched.

* - You just put your lips together and you come real close.

[Eddie Teach]

Yes, we all know individuals crack and shoot up their source of angst:

[Martinus]

This is way different. You're talking about mental instability, I'm talking about rationally planned out vengeance killing for whistle blowing. Yes, we all know individuals crack and shoot up their source of angst: schools, work places, the home of an ex-spouse.

But putting people on a hit list because they blew a whistle*? No, that is far fetched.

* - You just put your lips together and you come real close.

Swiss bankers do a lot of work for Russian and Islamic businessmen, the two types that are rather big on revenge.