And he thought Obama would be of help?
"UBS whistle-blower wants US to free him; But prosecutors say banker played role in tax fraud" by David Voreacos, Bloomberg News | July 6, 2010
MINERSVILLE, Pa. — Bradley Birkenfeld, once a
Am I supposed to be feeling sorry for him?
He is making more than I am.
Sleeping in a bunk bed in a dormitory-style building with 35 other inmates is far from the reward Birkenfeld says he deserves for exposing a massive tax-evasion scandal at UBS, the biggest Swiss bank. He told federal authorities how UBS bankers came to the United States to woo rich Americans, managed $20 billion of their assets, and helped them cheat the Internal Revenue Service.
Birkenfeld, 45, formerly of Massachusetts, has asked President Obama to commute a 40-month term he began in January at Schuylkill Federal Correctional Institution for his part in the conspiracy. He is seeking payment from the IRS whistle-blower program and wants the Justice Department to punish prosecutors who wouldn’t grant him immunity before his 2008 indictment and guilty plea.
“I delivered and documented this entire scandal, the largest in US history,’’ Birkenfeld said a prison interview. “I’m the most famous whistle-blower in the history of the world. It’s a question of doing the right thing, and that’s what I did.’’
His disclosures preceded UBS’s decision to pay $780 million to avoid prosecution, admit it fostered tax evasion from 2000 to 2007, and turn over data on 250 secret accounts to the IRS. UBS later agreed to reveal data on another 4,450 accounts, a transfer upheld last week by the Swiss Parliament. For lifting the veil on Swiss bank secrecy, Birkenfeld said, he’s a hero, not a criminal.
Birkenfeld’s chief prosecutor, Kevin Downing of the department’s tax division, and his main UBS client, California billionaire Igor Olenicoff, take a different view of his actions.
The government is working on behalf of UBS, huh?
Downing told a federal judge last August that while prosecutors wouldn’t know about the “massive tax scheme’’ without Birkenfeld, he deserved 30 months in prison for initially refusing to detail his own role in the fraud and for not revealing his work with Olenicoff. Birkenfeld, Downing said, also wasn’t useful as a witness....
Olenicoff, a real estate developer who pleaded guilty in December 2007 to filing a false tax return, got two years probation and paid $52 million in back taxes and penalties. He sued UBS, Birkenfeld, and others for racketeering. Olenicoff, who declined to comment, claims in his lawsuit that Birkenfeld defrauded him by investing some of his $200 million in thinly traded stocks without his knowledge.
Why should I care if these a**holes are ripping each other off?
A neurosurgeon’s son from Brookline, Birkenfeld attended Thayer Academy in Braintree, then Norwich University in Northfield, Vt. He got a master’s of business administration at the American Graduate School of Business in Vevey, Switzerland.
Before spending 15 years in Swiss banking, Birkenfeld worked as a currency trader at State Street Bank & Trust Co. in Boston. His said his whistle-blowing began there.
While at State Street, he said, he went to the FBI to report what he considered illegal activity in 1994. The FBI investigated. No charges were filed.
That's a real shock.
So what happened?
Where did Bradley go wrong?
--more--"
And that was the last MSM letter from the prison.
