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Switzerland

Wikileaks And Banking: Swiss Bank Worker In Court After Spilling Beans On Clients

Rudolf Elmer, former employee of Swiss bank Julius Baer, appeals his conviction of violating confidentiality. Elmer turned over private documents he says show the bank helping wealthy clients avoid taxes. Not surprisingly, Elmer's new best pal is

Assange and Elmer (EuroNews)
Assange and Elmer (EuroNews)
Catherine Cossy

ZURICH - His supporters see him as a David standing up to the Goliath of the Swiss banking industry, a whistleblower who was snubbed by local media and forced instead to turn to WikiLeaks.

The most impassioned of his backers will be on hand this week as the appeal opens for Rudolf Elmer, the former employee of Julius Baer, a private Swiss Bank, convicted of violating banking confidentiality and coercion.

Elmer was found guilty of turning over confidential bank documents in an attempt to show that Julius Baer had a policy of helping wealthy clients avoid taxes. The defendant is hoping to have his sentence reduced to 240 days, and his fine suspended (meaning that it goes on his record but does not have to be paid).

A crowd of left-wing protesters and several foreign journalists have traveled to Zurich to attend the trial. Elmer was fired from by Julius Baer in 2002 after working for the Swiss bank for over 20 years in the Caiman Islands. He photocopied thousands of his ex-employer's documents, which he then tried to pass on to the Swiss media, as proof of the bank's practices in the tax haven.

When the Swiss media collectively passed on the documents, he turned to WikiLeaks as a last resort. Summaries of the documents were posted on Wikileaks in 2008, and Julius Baer promptly filed a complaint against Elmer after having tried, in vain, to block access to the WikiLeaks website.

Although he never tried to hide his identity, Elmer's name was barely mentioned until Jan. 17, 2011, two days before his first trial began. On that day, he appeared with Julian Assange at the Frontline Club in London, and matter-of-factly handed the founder of WikiLeaks a CD said to contain information about 2,000 accounts of clients suspected of tax fraud.

It may have been a spectacular, media operation, but it also got him arrested just two hours after his first trial was over. He spent six months in provisional detention before being released this past summer. Though it is not clear what the ex-banker actually gave Assange, the current appeal relates to the original batch of leaked material.

Read the original article in French (subscription may be required)

photo - EuroNews

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Geopolitics

Yes, Xi Jinping Is Now More Powerful Than Mao Zedong Ever Was

After being re-elected as head of the Communist Party last year, the Chinese leader has been unanimously re-elected to another five-year term as head of state. Now, wielding more power than any other past Chinese communist leader, he wants to accelerate the rise of Chinese influence around the world.

Photo of huge portrait of Xi Jinping

Huge portrait of Xi Jinping is displayed in the National Day mass pageantry celebrating the 70th founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China

Yann Rousseau

-Analysis-

BEIJING — Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has been re-elected to a third five-year term at the head of the world's second largest economic power. Nobody was surprised.

The vote took place during a legislative assembly convened to rubber stamp decisions of the authoritarian power, during which 2,952 parliamentarians unanimously approved Xi's re-election before rising, in perfect choreography, to offer a prolonged standing ovation to their leader. As usual, Xi remained completely neutral in the face of the enthusiasm.

His victory was a mere formality after his re-election last fall as the head of the all-powerful party, which controls all of the country's political institutions, and after legislative amendments to erase term limits that would have forced him out.

Xi Jinping, who took over the presidency in 2013, "is now the most powerful leader in the history of the People's Republic, since its founding in 1949. Institutionally, he holds even more power than Mao Zedong," says Suisheng Zhao, a professor and Chinese foreign policy expert at the University of Denver.

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