Rudolf Elmer, a former Swiss banker, is set to hand over files to WikiLeaks that show offshore bank accounts of high net worth individuals and corporations to evade tax payments. Law professor Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law, offers the following comment:
“Rudolf Elmer has demonstrated that the ‘shadow banking system’ is not just about complex financial instruments that hide risk and the casino in which those instruments are traded. It is also about a dark corner of the banking system that hides personal and corporate wealth for a host of purposes, especially tax evasion.
As Elmer does his WikiLeaks dump in London, one issue for federal prosecutors to focus on is whether the banks and their officers filed suspicious activity reports, so-called ‘SARS’, as is required by the Bank Secrecy Act whenever an institution or its employees know or have reason to suspect illegal activity.”
Contact Cornelius Hurley, 617-353-5427, ckhurley@bu.edu
