Swiss bank Baer defends Web site shutdown
ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss bank Julius Baer defended on Thursday taking legal action to shut down a Web site that published what the site said were details of secret accounts linked to tax schemes.
Baer's statement came as international pressure mounted on neighboring Liechtenstein to lift the veil on bank secrecy that many countries such as Germany and the United States say is used to evade paying tax.
Baer, one of Switzerland's largest banks specializing in managing money for the wealthy, said the wikileaks.org Web site had published purported secret account information stolen by a former employee, and that the bank's only aim was to protect privacy.
Zurich-based Baer says the documents, posted by a self-styled whistleblower alleging tax schemes using Cayman Islands accounts, were falsified and rejects the claims made in them.
"It is not and never has been Julius Baer's intention to stifle anyone's right to free speech," Baer said in a statement. It said the documents were prohibited from publication under both U.S. and Swiss laws.
"The posting of confidential bank records by anonymous sources significantly harms the privacy rights of all individuals," Baer said.
Documents that Baer says were stolen and forged by a disgruntled employee were published on the site last month. A U.S. Federal judge shut down the Web site earlier this month, causing outrage among free speech advocates like the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU.
The ACLU filed a motion on Wednesday to lift the shutdown. It said wikileaks.org was conceived as a place where whistleblowers could post documents of public interest anonymously.
Baer said its sole interest was to protect the legitimate right to privacy of its clients and not to dampen press freedom.
Baer said it tried to negotiate for a month to get the documents taken off the Web site before a federal court shut the entire site down. The site now publishes under a different domain name and at other, mirror addresses.
Liechtenstein, which shares a border and extensive financial ties with Switzerland, has found itself in the eye of a storm over tax evasion after German intelligence agents bought data that was allegedly stolen from a private bank there.
German tax officials have used the data to launch investigations and press charges of tax evasion against dozens whose cover was blown by the leak. Germany has offered the data to tax officials elsewhere in an open call for battle against tax havens.
(Reporting by Thomas Atkins; Editing by Charles Dick)
