Spotlight: Bradley Birkenfeld
"Defendant Birkenfeld['s]... substantial assistance has been timely, significant, useful, truthful, complete and reliable." (Department of Justice, August 18, 2009). The DOJ also admitted that "but for Mr. Birkenfeld [the UBS] scheme would not have been discovered by the U.S. government." Bradley Birkenfeld commenced serving a three-year and four-month sentence in federal prison on January 8, 2010, a direct result of blowing the whistle on one of the largest tax fraud schemes in U.S. history.
Bradley Birkenfeld filed his official clemency petition on Tax Day, April 15th. Your support is urgently needed! Take action by clicking here.
-
Mr. Bradley Birkenfeld is an international banker who blew the whistle on secret offshore accounts at UBS bank in Switzerland. Mr. Birkenfeld, while working for UBS, came to realize that "bank managers were encouraging breaches of UBS's own written policies in helping American clients evade federal taxes." When Mr. Birkenfeld realized in 2005 that UBS was engaging in illegal and unethical behavior in their handling of banking clients, he immediately complained internally to UBS's Legal and Compliance departments and, when his complaints were ignored, he resigned. Sensing a cover up by UBS, Mr. Birkenfeld then took courageous measures to travel to the United States at his own expense to blow the whistle on UBS's illegal activities to the US government, including the Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service, Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Senate.
Mr. Birkenfeld's voluntary disclosures directly led to the recovery of billions of taxpayers dollars and the end of the illegal UBS tax fraud scheme. Despite his invaluable contribution, Mr. Birkenfeld began serving a 40-month prison sentence on January 8, 2010. In return for his extraordinary cooperation with the U.S. government, Mr. Birkenfeld remains the only person involved the in the largest illegal tax scheme in history to receive a lengthy prison sentence. He also spent over 19 months in a home confinement program, which included electronic monitoring, a curfew, and travel restrictions. So far, everyone prosecuted in relation to the UBS tax scheme has received minor sentences, including probation, fines, community service, no more than 3 months in prison and/or house arrest. The director of the entire UBS program, Martin Liechti, was released by U.S. authorities and allowed to return to Switzerland without any prosecution.
Read Bradley Birkenfeld's official petition for commutation of sentence
Read the direct appeal to President Obama
Photo credit: photos courtesy of www.whistleblowers.org.
Biographical information:
Bradley Birkenfeld was born in 1965 in Brookline, MA. He attended the Thayer Acadamy in Braintree, MA. He obtained a BS in Economics from Norwich University Military College in Vermont and a MBA in the American Graduate School of Business Vevey, Switzerland. Before becoming a whistleblower,Mr. Birkenfeld had a distinguished career as an international banker. Since 1988, he has worked in International global investment and wealth management at Credit Suisse, Barclays Bank, UBS and Union Charter. He has also held teaching positions at Thayer Academy, International Institute for Management and Development and The American Graduate School of International Management.
-
PDF Version
In October 2001, Bradley Birkenfeld began working at UBS, in Geneva, as a private banker for high-net- worth clients, primarily in the United States. After learning that UBS’s secret dealings with American customers violated an agreement the bank had reached with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), he attempted to solve matters internally with UBS for approximately a year and a half. After these efforts failed, he resigned and provided the IRS with information about 19,000 alleged tax cheats with accounts worth more than $19 billion—the largest whistleblower case of its type ever exposed. However, the Justice Department did not view Birkenfeld as being forthcoming about his largest client, a Russian émigré and California real-estate developer, who was convicted for having hidden some $200 million. Though Birkenfeld voluntarily disclosed information about this client to other government agencies (which issued him a subpoena that protected him from prosecution for violating Swiss bank secrecy laws), the Department of Justice refused to issue Birkenfeld such a protective subpoena, after repeated requests. Arrested on a single charge, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 40 months in a federal penitentiary, a stiffer sentence even than the 30 months demanded by prosecutors. On January 8, he entered a federal penitentiary, where he wrote this note for World Policy Journal.
-
-
-
- Read the Treasury Department Inspector General's Report
- Read NWC Press Release
- Read TIME Magazine article on how IRS whistleblower was mishandled
- Read 8-21-09 sentencing transcript from the US District Court in the Southern District of Florida
-
Exhibits to Staff Report
-
-
-
NWC Condemns Failure of United States to Prosecute Tax Criminals
Washington D.C. June 8, 2010. The Federal Assembly of the Swiss parliament voted to reject a deal between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and UBS in which UBS had agreed to turn over the names of 4,450 U.S. citizens who held secret and illegal bank accounts at UBS.Stephen M. Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center and attorney for Bradley Birkenfeld, said:Tags: Press Releases, Bradley Birkenfeld -
TAKE ACTION!
Washington D.C. April 15, 2010. Today, Bradley Birkenfeld, the whistleblower who exposed the $20 billion illegal UBS tax fraud scheme, filed a direct appeal to President Barack Obama and an official petition requesting clemency. The petition, which is now available online, calls on the president to immediately commute Mr. Birkenfeld's 40-month prison sentence to time served. Mr. Birkenfeld is currently incarcerated in the Schuylkill County federal prison.Tags: Press Releases, Bradley Birkenfeld -
Washington, D.C. April 14, 2010. Former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld , who is currently serving a 40-month sentence for one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States at Schuylkill County federal prison, will file a formal request for clemency to President Barack Obama on Tax Day, April 15, 2010.
Tags: Press Releases, Bradley Birkenfeld -
Washington, D.C. April 7, 2010.
Statement by NWC Executive Director Stephen M. Kohn:The Department of Justice (DOJ) press release crediting their efforts to prosecute Bradley Birkenfeld with increasing tax compliance is the very definition of the word 'chutzpah.' Prosecuting the whistleblower does not encourage more people to come forward and provide information on tax fraud.
-