UBS whistle-blower may have forever altered Swiss banking

[steven johnson]

Bradley Birkenfeld is to be sentenced Friday in Fort Lauderdale for participating in UBS' illicit cross-border business. Although he faces a maximum of five years in prison, the Justice Department asked the court to cut that in half in a filing Tuesday. His attorney's are asking for probation. He could also get a break in another way. Under IRS regulations, whistle blowere in tax cheater cases could be eligible for rewards of up to 30% of any money the IRS recoups. Oh, Bradley, you scamp!

In March 2006, an American employee of UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, sent a confidential letter to a top executive.

"I wish to invoke my rights listed under the UBS Whistleblowing Protection for Employees" policy, he wrote.

With that, Bradley Birkenfeld fired the first shot in the historic and devastating assault on Swiss bank secrecy that is soon expected to culminate in the exposure of thousands of Americans who used secret accounts to dodge taxes.

All of that is attributable in large part to Birkenfeld, the 44-year-old son of a Massachusetts neurosurgeon, who approached U.S. authorities in 2007 and provided an extraordinary inside account of the bank's conduct, according to court papers filed Tuesday.

UBS whistle-blower may have forever altered Swiss banking