Whistleblower Protection Blog : Whistleblower Lawyer & Attorney : National Whistleblower Legal Defense and Education Fund : Whistleblower Protection, Fraud Claims : Washington DC

The Swiss parliament finally approved the deal made between UBS and the U.S. government that requires UBS to turn over the names of 4,450 U.S. citizens who held accounts at the Swiss bank. The NWC issued the following release:

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*This post was drafted by Meryl Grenadier (NWC fellow)

In the past 24 hours there have been significant developments in the case of UBS whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld. Three years ago, the former UBS banker provided the U.S. government with detailed information on how to identify the names of 19,000 American citizens who held illegal secret bank accounts at UBS bank in Switzerland (read the letter from Mr. Birkenfeld's attorneys outlining this information here). He reported the largest tax fraud scheme in history, and for the first time there was a crack in the vault of Swiss bank secrecy.

Bradley Birkenfeld also warned that Swiss politicians would do everything in their power to protect Swiss bank secrecy and block the release of UBS client information. This prediction became reality yesterday when the Federal Assembly of the Swiss parliament rejected a part of the deferred prosecution agreement between UBS and the U.S. Department of Justice. This part of the agreement requires UBS to turn over the names of 4,450 American tax criminals by August 20 of this year, a small fraction of the 19,000 clients.

In response to the vote, Senator Charles Grassley sent a letter to the U.S. government, expressing his outrage at the mishandling of information provided by Mr. Birkenfeld and the misguided reliance on the Swiss government for UBS USA information. Senator Grassley wrote (read the full letter here):

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