Fourteen whistleblowers hosted a book signing party on April 9, 2011 for Stephen Kohn's highly acclaimed The Whistleblower's Handbook. Pictured here are:  Jane Turner, Jim Murtagh, Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, Bill Sanjour, Russell Tice, Kiki Ikossi, Jim Bobreski, Dr. David L. Lewis, Tom Hunter, Linda Tripp, Marita Murphy, Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, and Bassem Youssef.

5-Part Series by Michael Bronner published on Global Post

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Part 1: A UBS insider blows the whistle on Swiss banking

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Caption:  (Photo illustration from photograph by Gasper Tringale)

NEW YORK - It's the inner sanctum of Swiss banking - the heavily-guarded nexus between numbered Swiss bank accounts and their owner's good names - and it's the rare American that is allowed entry.

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Harry Markopolos, call your office.

Under little-noticed new provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, whistleblowers like Markopolos who alerted the SEC to Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme will for the first time be entitled to collect between 10- and- 30 percent of the money recovered by the government.

ZURICH-Swiss legislators approved a law that clears the way for the government to hand over the names of thousands of alleged U.S. tax evaders to the Internal Revenue Service, dodging the risk that the U.S. would reopen a bruising tax case against Swiss bank UBS AG.

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(Washington Post) Former Swiss banker Bradley Birkenfeld had secrets he was burning to tell, secrets so profound they could change lives and fortunes, beginning with his own.

They could make him rich, and they could send him to prison. They could expose thousands of Americans who had hidden money from the Internal Revenue Service, and they could implicate one of the world's most powerful financial institutions in a far-reaching fraud against the U.S. government. They could topple Switzerland from its vaunted position as secret banker to the world.

(NY Daily News) A former banker who blew the whistle on thousands of secret bank accounts rich Americans held at Swiss giant UBS claimed Thursday some U.S. politicians also kept off-shore accounts with the bank.

"We had an office in Washington that we all referred to as the PEP office - for 'Politically Exposed People,'" Bradley Birkenfeld said.

(Wall Street Journal) Jailed whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld will detail his role in exposing widespread tax evasion in the Swiss banking industry in a clemency request he plans to make to President Barack Obama on Thursday.

Birkenfeld, 45, began serving a 40-month sentence in January for his role in helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. He was formerly a banker at UBS AG (UBS). 

MIAMI (AP) - An imprisoned ex-Swiss banker credited with exposing widespread tax evasion at Swiss bank UBS AG is seeking clemency from President Barack Obama, his attorneys said Wednesday.

Lawyers at the Washington-based National Whistleblowers Center said they will file a clemency petition Thursday for Bradley Birkenfeld, timing it to coincide with the day U.S. income tax returns are due for most people. The petition seeks a reduction in Birkenfeld's three-year-plus sentence for a fraud conspiracy conviction to time served since he reported to prison Jan. 8.

MINERSVILLE, Pa.-Bradley Birkenfeld, the whistle-blower who helped expose widespread tax evasion in the Swiss banking industry, insists he would do it all over again. But, he would do it very differently.

With the benefit of hindsight sharpened by the view from the Pennsylvania prison where he began serving three-plus years in January, Mr. Birkenfeld says he is an informant who blew on the wrong whistle.

The 45-year-old Mr. Birkenfeld has a new legal team and tactics in place, and fuelled by anger at how he was treated by the Justice Department, he plans to ask President Barack Obama to commute his sentence. He also still hopes to claim a multimillion-dollar reward from an Internal Revenue Service whistle-blower office, which may begin paying monetary rewards this year.

Changes to the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act currently working its way through the Senate would cover up intelligence failures and civil liberties abuses in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by repealing existing protections for FBI whistleblowers and strengthening the state secrets privilege.

The bill is currently being "hotlined" through the Senate, which entails both the Senate majority leader and minority leader agreeing to pass the legislation by unanimous consent without a roll-call vote. This practice is usually used to pass uncontroversial bills and simple procedural motions, but opponents fear it is being used to push through this measure with little or no public debate.