Bradley Birkenfeld is the most significant financial whistleblower in history and the author of Lucifer’s Banker UNCENSORED: The Untold Story of How I Destroyed Swiss Bank Secrecy, (September 2020). As an international private banker, he exposed how UBS, the world’s largest bank, helped ultra-wealthy Americans commit billions in tax fraud.
His bombshell revelations cracked the impenetrable fortress of Swiss banks, proving that offshore financial institutions systematically aided clients’ tax evasion, corruption, and terrorist activities. His case triggered monumental changes in banking laws, the federal tax code, and international tax treaties.
In 2005, despite a thriving career spanning Credit Suisse, Barclays Bank, and UBS, Birkenfeld could no longer keep silent about bank-enabled tax fraud. When UBS rejected his concerns, he turned to the U.S. authorities.
Though jailed for 30 months, he was soon vindicated with a record-breaking IRS reward: his work had enabled the U.S. Treasury to recover $25 billion in back taxes, fines, and penalties.
The case set off a domino effect of international investigations into offshore banking’s secret crimes, including the Panama Papers and much more.
Now retired, Bradley Birkenfeld is a philanthropist and supports whistleblowing efforts worldwide.
Lucifer’s Banker UNCENSORED
The Untold Story of How I Destroyed Swiss Bank Secrecy
Overview
The Devil is in the Banking Details
As a private banker working for the largest bank in the world (UBS), Bradley Birkenfeld was an expert in Switzerland’s shell-game of offshore companies and secret numbered accounts.
He wined and dined ultrawealthy clients whose millions of dollars were hidden away from business partners, spouses, and tax authorities. As his client list grew, Birkenfeld lived a life of money, fast cars, and beautiful women, but when he discovered that UBS was planning to betray him, he blew the whistle to the US Government.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) scorned Birkenfeld’s unprecedented whistle-blowing and attempted to silence him with a single charge of conspiracy. Yet, Birkenfeld would not be intimidated. He took his secrets to the US Senate, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), where he prevailed.
His bombshell revelations helped the US Treasury recover over $25 billion (and counting) in back taxes, fines, and penalties from American tax cheats. But Birkenfeld was shocked to discover that at the same time he was cooperating with the US Government, the Department of Justice was still doggedly pursuing him. He was arrested, pled guilty, and served thirty months in federal prison. When he emerged, the Internal Revenue Service gave him a whistle-blower award for $104 million, the largest such reward in history.
A true, real-life thriller, Lucifer’s Banker UNCENSORED is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the secret Swiss banking industry and a harrowing account of our corrupt justice system. Readers will follow Birkenfeld and share his outrage with the incompetence and corruption at the Department of Justice, and they will cheer him on as he ”hammers” one of the most well-known and powerful banks in the world – UBS.
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