WikiLeaks promises Swiss banking secrets revelations
Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer handed two discs to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a press conference in London.
WikiLeaks could release secret Swiss banking records it received Monday in "a matter of weeks" if it can process them quickly enough, Assange said.
Elmer said he would not reveal the names in the records, and said he was unable to say how many people were covered.
Elmer describes himself as an activist/reformer/banker.
"I think, as a banker, I do have the right to stand up if something is wrong," he said Monday, explaining why he was giving the documents to the website.
Elmer is due to go on trial Wednesday in Switzerland for violating the country's banking secrecy regulations.
He said he wanted "to let society know what I do know and how this system works because it is damaging our society in the way that money is moved" and hidden in offshore jurisdictions.
He began looking into the issue when he was a banker in the Cayman Islands, he said.
When he first looked into the problems of offshore banking he said it looked like "a mouse tail," but as he investigated in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, it became a "dragon's tail," and finally a many-headed dragon.
Elmer will not reveal names, lawyer Jack Blum said Monday, saying it was not always possible to determine who, if anyone, had engaged in "criminal tax evasion."
Elmer aims to "challenge Swiss Bank Secrecy at the European Court of Human Rights and the Swiss courts," he says on his website. He has worked at six offshore banking centers, he says.
Elmer and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange worked together on a complaint against Swiss banking secrecy at the European Court of Human Rights in 2008.