by Brett Kendall
Three advocacy groups asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Thursday to personally review the case of the prison-bound banker who helped U.S. tax authorities build their groundbreaking case against UBS AG (UBS).
The groups said in a letter to Holder that former UBS private banker Bradley Birkenfeld, who was sentenced in August to 40 months in prison for helping the Swiss bank's clients evade taxes, should have been given protections as a whistleblower and granted immunity from prosecution.
The National Whistleblowers Center, the Government Accountability Project and the Project on Government Oversight said Birkenfeld's jail sentence will discourage others from coming forward with information about offshore tax evasion.
"If Mr. Birkenfeld is denied whistleblower protections and goes to jail on January 8, 2010, the Department of Justice will be sending the wrong message to the thousands of other international bankers who have direct knowledge concerning the billions of dollars in lost U.S. tax revenues and the trillions of dollars stashed in these illegal accounts," the groups said.
Birkenfeld pleaded guilty last year and received a longer prison sentence than the 2 1/2 year term recommended by prosecutors.
The Justice Department has said it had no case against UBS without Birkenfeld's information, but said it prosecuted him because he was not forthcoming about his own role in the scheme.
A Justice Department spokesman had no comment on the groups' letter.
UBS agreed in February to pay $780 million as part of a deal to avoid criminal prosecution for helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. In August, the bank agreed to reveal the identities of approximately 4,450 of its U.S. clients who are suspected of hiding offshore accounts.
Despite his conviction, Birkenfeld is seeking a multi-million dollar award from the Internal Revenue Service for reporting the UBS tax-evasion scheme.
