Zurich: Former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer,
who was found guilty of breaching bank secrecy laws over his
transfer of client data to the online website WikiLeaks, has
been remanded in custody, press reports said on Sunday.
The former chief operating officer at private bank
Julius Baer`s subsidiary in the Cayman Islands was detained
yesterday because he risks destroying evidence, his lawyer
Ganden Tethong Blattner told ATS news agency.
Elmer plans to appeal against Wednesday`s court
decision that found him guilty of handing over secret files to
the whistleblowing site and sentenced him to a suspended fine
of 7,200 Swiss francs (5,500 euros), the lawyer said.
Dismissed by the bank in 2002, the 55-year-old former
banker handed over a first set of bank client data to
Wikileaks in 2007 in his stated quest to expose tax evasion
systems.
But barely out of court, the ex-banker was arrested a
second time by Swiss police for having handed over another two
CD-ROMs to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at a press
conference in London on Monday.
The data, he said, came from at least three financial
institutions and covered a period from 1990 to 2009.
"Switzerland puts itself in the crosshairs with such
acts," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Sonntag daily,
adding that Elmer`s detention justifies faster publication by
the website of the data he submitted.
WikiLeaks said on its website that it will publish the
documents at the most "in two weeks."
PTI
