Jan. 17: A former Swiss banker on Monday handed over documents of 2,000 high net worth people from US, Britain and Asia to WikiLeaks that he claims would expose attempts by these business leaders and lawmakers to evade tax payments.
Mr Rudolf Elmer, a former employee of the Swiss-based bank Julius Baer, said the account holders include celebrities, business leaders and lawmakers.
The WikiLeaks founder, Mr Julian Assange, fighting cases to extradite him to Sweden to face sex charges, appeared alongside Mr Elmer to say that they would make these documents, contained in two discs, public in the future.
According to a report in Swiss newspaper Der Sonntag, the data covers multinationals, financial firms and wealthy individuals from many countries, including the UK, US and Germany, and covers the period 1990-2009.