Notorious Swiss whistleblowers

Christoph Meili was a Swiss security guard who saved Holocaust-era bank documents from the shredder at UBS bank in 1997.
Meili, who was then working for an outside security firm, gave the documents he saved to a Jewish organisation. The disclosure led to the Zurich authorities opening a judicial investigation against Meili on suspicion of violating banking secrecy.
Bradley Birkenfeld, a former Credit Suisse and UBS private banker, handed over confidential information to the United States authorities, starting a process that allowed them to prosecute several banks and tear down some of Switzerland’s secrecy walls.
Herve Falciani took data from his former employer, HSBC Switzerland, to several foreign governments. As a result, more charges have been laid at the doors of Swiss banks whilst Falciani holes out in Spain, which refuses to extradite him.
Rudolf Elmer worked for nearly two decades at Swiss private bank Julius Bär until he was sacked in 2002. He unsuccessfully attempted to pass on evidence of alleged malpractice of the bank to the media until finding a willing recipient in Wikileaks in 2007, that appeared on the campaigning group’s website.
In 2011, he passed on a second batch of information to Wikileaks, days before being convicted of violating Swiss banking secrecy laws. On December 10, 2014, Elmer will appear again before the same Zurich court to stand trial of a second breach of banking secrecy laws.
Other bankers have also passed on information (sometimes in exchange for financial rewards) in direct violation of Swiss laws. A few individuals have been jailed or fined for their activities, most recently former Credit Suisse employee Renzo Gadola who was given a suspended fine this summer for handing secret data to the Department of Justice in exchange for a lighter sentence in the US.