Offshore financial centres may have some thinking to do now that a Swiss court has found a former banker guilty of issuing threats to his former employer and of violating banking secrecy.
Rudolf Elmer was chief operating officer of the Cayman Islands branch of the Swiss bank Julius Baer before he was sacked in 2002.
Mr Elmer claims to have handed details of rich tax evaders with Cayman Islands accounts to Wikileaks on the grounds that he wanted to expose the damage that tax evasion causes to society.
He was fined over US$6,000 by the court in Zurich.
However, Tony Travers, chairman of Cayman Finance, which oversees financial services in the world's fifth ranked offshore banking centre, has downplayed the significance of the reported handing over of the accounts to WikiLeaks.
He spoke with BBC Caribbean's Bertram Niles.
click on the link below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/caribbean/news/story/2011/01/110120_caymansswiss.shtml