From The Wayne Madsen Report (a subscription-based service) comes this analysis (April, 2010) of the attack on the financial privacy of Swiss money manager, Julius Baer Group, exposed by whistle-blower Rudolf Elmer:
“WMR’s financial intelligence sources report that the unauthorized disclosure of a compact disk to Wikileaks that contained financial details of the clients of the secretive and usually highly-secure Zurich-based independent money management Julius Baer Group was designed to destroy the firm’s standing with its customers and make it ripe for a hostile takeover by interests associated with multi-billionaire vulture capitalist George Soros, including Goldman Sachs. Julius Baer was founded in the 19th century.
In December 2007, the former chief of Baer’s Cayman Islands unit, Rudolf Elmer, leaked information about surveillance of him and his family to Wikileaks. In June 2005, the Swiss newspaper “Cash” and the Wall Street Journal reported on the receipt of a CD containing clients’ transactions, including every deposit made, from Baer’s Cayman unit that dealt with anonymous trusts. The CD data covered the time frame 1997 to 2002. Elmer had been suspected of the leak and was fired by Baer in 2003. In January 2008, Wikileaks began publishing details of Baer’s clients — who were accused of tax evasion and money laundering. The clients resided in the United States, Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, and Peru. Elmer was jailed briefly in 2005 by Swiss authorities for violation of Swiss financial privacy laws. Elmer eventually turned over Baer documents to Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, the US Internal Revenue Service, and the Senate Senate subcommittee on investigations headed by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI).
For Europeans and others who had no financial or other connections to the United States, the fact that they were placed under an investigation by the United States represented
For example, the Hong Kong resident on the leaked Baer documents is Lord Kadoorie, who died in 1993. The Kadoorie family, originally Iraqi Jews from Baghdad, migrated to Hogn Kong via Mumbai. The Kadoories, however, were not involved in tax evasion’ since using offshore accounts is completely legal in Hong Kong.
Elmer worked for Baer for 16 years, first bas a senior auditor and then from 1994 to 2003 as the chief of the bank’s unit in the Cayman Islands. Elmer is represented by former Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigator Jack Blum, now with the Lobel Novins Lamont law firm in Washington, DC. After being fired by Baer in 2003, Elmer went to work for Noble Investments of Zurich, a hedge fund consultancy. Elmer began leaking information about Noble, as well, including its use of a Bermuda shell corporation to avoid Swiss taxes.
Blum helped investigate bribery violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the 1970s by Lockheed Corporation. The Lockheed bribery scandal helped bring down Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who was later convicted and imprisoned in Japan for accepting bribes from Lockheed. However, WMR has learned that Blum and the Senate committee was very selective in who they investigated for laundering money from foreign bribes. While Tanaka was singled out, Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew and assassinated democratically-elected Chilean President Salvador Allende with the help of Henry Kissinger and the CIA, was allowed to launder his ill-gotten gains through Riggs Bank in Washington, DC. WMR has learned that Tanaka despised both Richard Nixon and Kissinger and he was thus targeted selectively by the Nixon Justice and Treasury Departments.On December 4, 2008, Alex Widmer, 52, the CEO of Julius Baer and a widower with three children, was found dead from an apparent suicide. Widmer had expanded Baer’s presence in Moscow and Indonesia and he previously served as the chief of private banking for Credit Suisse. WMR has learned that Widmer was assassinated after he discovered the links between the bank’s leaks of client information to the media and Wikileaks and Israeli intelligence and the Soros network. Only the New York Times reported that Widmer’s death was from suicide and an autopsy report was never released but bank employees were told that Widmer died from an “unexpected illness.”
After Julius Baer Group was rocked by the leaks by Elmer through Wikileaks, Baer became the target of a takeover bid by Goldman Sachs. As hedge funds began withdrawing from Baer, the firm’s share values dropped by 60 percent making it vulnerable to a hostile takeover. The hedge fund withdrawals lasted for ten months during which time Goldman Sachs was behind the attack on Lehman Brothers and Soros was shorting the Icelandic krona.
There is also another interesting wrinkle to the Baer story.
The leaks of Baer’s client data began in 2002. Wikileaks was not founded until 2006. In the interim, there were other operatives involved in leaking the firm’s data to the media. The suspicions are that they worked for Soros’s Quantum, which is a front for Rothschild interests, as well as for Goldman Sachs. WMR has learned that suspicions about the pre-Wikileaks leakers is focused on Mossad agents. The Julius Baer operations in the Cayman Islands would have involved the financial holdings of Latin Americans involved in drug money laundering. The involvement of Mossad in exposing the Cayman accounts likely had repercussions for Israelis who were also involved in cocaine smuggling in Latin America. It is pointed out that in March 2007, as Baer information was continuing to leak, Tsuriel Raphael, Israel’s ambassador to El Salvador, was found in the garden of his home drunk, naked, and tied up with a rubber ball in his mouth and a sex toy inserted in his anus. Raphael was recalled to Israel. A few months earlier, in January, the body of David Dahan, the chief of Israel’s Defense Ministry Mission to Europe, was found floating in the Seine near Rouen, France. Police ruled out foul play and said the death was a suicide.
Post-9/11 anti-terrorist financing legislation permitted Goldman Sachs’s and Soros’s operatives within the Treasury Department to target any bank where it was even suggested that people associated with Osama bin Laden may have had accounts. However, for Soros, Goldman Sachs, and the Mossad, the attack on Julius Baer represented some “score settling” over Swiss financial holdings from victims of the Holocaust.
To summarize succinctly what occurred with Baer and Wikileaks, WMR received the following real-world explanation: “The Bush administration investigators find few accounts actually linked to terrorism, but a lot of accounts of rich Arabs, who get pissed at being misidentified and who then complain to Bush. So then, the neocons go after middle-tier billionaires and millionaires for ‘tax evasion’ and ‘corruption’ – which are NOT part of the USA Patriot Act, but are still a good source of easy money, since the victims don’t have room to complain. When the robbed do complain, they are threatened with exposure to the media, and when the media hesitates to publish, there’s a standoff. The banks have to protect their clients since the “prosecution” targets, in some cases, are intelligence agents. The Soros hedge funds and Goldman dump shares in the Euro banks, but to no avail. They hire stooges like Rudolf Elmer, a disgruntled manager fired from the Caribbean division of Julius Baer. All he’s got is tax evasion, not even proof of drug money, because he’s not stupid enough to cross the cartel. Elmer then moves to Mauritius. So without any handles on Baer and other Swiss banks, the U.S. government leaks customer lists (confiscated from scared employees by the Treasury and CIA agents) to Wikileaks, conveniently created by the Soros-Goldman Sachs-Mossad construct for blackmail purposes.”
Great article as usual. But look into Wayne Madsen’s background. See how he attacks WikiLeaks! Disinformation … everywhere?
Yes. But I’ve followed Madsen for a while. I think he has leftist blinders on some things, but wikileaks really does strike me as somewhat suspicious.
(I liked their climategate expose, though, and think that was pretty genuine).
Assange himself could be a sincere guy. Maybe he’s occasionally used to feed things into the discourse. The “leak” format makes that easy to do.
I don’t know for sure, of course. ….
But you know, Jimmy Wales (of wikipedia) is a former Chicago board trader…and wikipedia itself promotes a lot of disinformation. So the fact that Assange used the “wiki” concept itself makes me a tad leery of the whole thing.
Any outfit that is so cavalier about privacy – especially in relation to finance – lends itself to abuse.
No. Somehow I trust Madsen a bit more (even if he’s wrong on the climategate bit). He provides a lot of context. And he’s been around much longer.
From his site bio …
“Madsen has some twenty years experience in security issues. As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation. Madsen was a Senior Fellow for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy public advocacy organization. Madsen is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO), and the National Press Club.”
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/categories/20070329
Member of the Association for Intelligence Officers!
That’s how these people are disseminated into society. Used to be they could get away with it, without mentioning their background, but now they have to mention it because people will research them – and thus the hope is that nobody finds any questionable associations to be suspicious. Take a look at Daily Kos and its founder. Same thing. Do they really burn their bridges when they start their “reports” and Internet sites?
Agree with you 100 percent on Wales. But do you know of any links between Assange and Wales – other than the name? The release of the US military footage was incredibly damning (to the US) and now he is apparently under some sort of travel restrictions in Australia. Doesn’t sound like the powers-that-be are very happy with him …
Again, don’t know about either of these two but just as you have questions about Assange, so maybe one could have questions about Madsen as well (not that he hasn’t done plenty of good work!). But that IS how it works. Only a few percentage points are disinformation. The rest is great stuff. Pick and choose your shots …
You are onto something big here. But you ought to go further – you may change your mind. Alex Jones possible disinformation as well? (Constant scare tactics to diminish and demoralize opposition.) Now see here – Madsen and Jones team up against Wikileaks! Have they unconsciously outed themselves! You are great investigative reporter! Look further! … Inquiring minds await the results of what you have begun to uncover …
http://www.disclose.tv/forum/alex-jones-and-wayne-madsen-assault-wikileaks-t19579.html
John Young of Cryptome was recently interviewed and said nothing about Madsen’s claims. Quite the opposite, he praised Wikileaks highly. Listen to the interview for yourself.
Somehow these folks are trying to make the new media protection law in Iceland as a conspiracy of George Soros and Goldman Sachs. I guess Mr. Madsen doesn’t know that the IMMI was started to protect anti-banking whistleblowers that divulged details about Iceland’s recent economic collapse. I suppose Mr. Madsen would rather bankers have the secrecy to screw the population of the world out of their hard earned cash with absolute impunity.
A free media zone for whistleblowers replaces the MSM outlets that have unreservedly given up their objectivity. To argue against this legislation as it is written is to work against the designs of free people around the world.
… and Alex Jones obviously thinks it deserves a half an hour of airtime.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO PUBLISH THE LAST TWO COMMENTS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO. Up to you. Your site …
Was just passing on more info …
Very interested if you follow this up. Always wondered about that death. Something funny going on … Are they twisting it into an attack on Wikileaks?
I’ll check it out.
But it’s an impossible task to sort out conscious disinformation, psyops, honest error, caution…
Some people think Jones focuses on “illuminati” to protect himself from the charge of anti-Semitism.
Others think he is a shill, based solely on the fact that he is married to a Jewish woman (wow – that’s pretty bigoted since some of the sharpest critics of the NWO are Jewish)
Madsen has come up with some complex conspiracies and I’m wary of the fact that he doesn’t source.
Seymour Hersh also doesn’t source…and I have previously voiced my opinion (which is also the opinion of Douglas Valentine and of Ann Williamson) that Hersh isn’t altogether kosher.
The same may be true of Madsen.
But the fact that he has an intelligence background doesn’t bother me. If there was funny business going on, he wouldn’t be so upfront with his credentials.
OK, along with many other fans will look forward very much if you end up digging deeper, though doubtless you have limited time.
No – no.
I want to do it.
But unfortunately, I need to do other things to live until I become savvy enough to fix my blog so it makes money.
If you want me to do this more, you will have to dig up someone who can help me do that so that I have more time to write
Plus, people steal work…
I’m not willing to slave over things and have other people make names and money from my work while I get kicked to the side
It’s why I do commentary or aggregating more than research these days
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