Chapter 9 Part 2: Tightrope - No Turning Back

The grenade was out of the bag. This is the second half of Chapter 9 in my Lucifer’s Banker Uncensored retelling series.

Spy Brochures and Counter-Surveillance Manuals

Birkenfeld kept feeding the Senate committee. He handed over UBS “Fund Facts” brochures – printed in four languages, distributed to American clients on US soil. The brochures marketed investment products that UBS bankers were absolutely not licensed to sell to Americans. When clients wanted to discuss investments, the standard instruction was: “Call us from outside the US. Find a clean pay phone.”

Then came the real showstopper. Birkenfeld pulled out a UBS-issued Counter-Surveillance Case Study booklet. The bank had trained its own employees in spy tactics – how to spot a tail, how to avoid detection. The staffers read it with their eyes wide open. It was straight out of a Cold War handbook.

The Paper Alibi

Next, Birkenfeld showed them a three-page internal memo called “Cross-Border Banking Policies” from November 2004. It explicitly forbade bankers from doing everything UBS had trained and pressured them to do for years. And then a newer ten-page version from June 2007, also contradicting actual bank practices.

UBS had built a paper trail to throw its own people under the bus. The committee staffers shook their heads. One whispered, “Do you believe this?”

The Client List Bomb

As the session wound down, Birkenfeld saved the best for last. He handed over the full names of his clients, their numbered accounts, asset holdings, offshore shell companies, and trusts. Not just his clients – also those of his boss Christian Bovay, Bovay’s boss Martin Liechti, and the managing director Raoul Weil. A slice of 19,000 total secret accounts.

Igor Olenicoff sat at the top with $200 million. Kevin Costner was on there too – “a small fish,” Birkenfeld said, “only $20 million.” When the staffers kept reading after Birkenfeld left for the day, someone gasped at a name. “No! Not her. You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Session Two: The Staffers Get Angry

One week later, Birkenfeld returned. The mood had shifted. The committee staffers were not angry at him. They were angry at the system – decades of Swiss banks openly mocking American law while the IRS, SEC, and DOJ did nothing.

Birkenfeld dropped more bad news. UBS was not alone. Credit Suisse and over 130 other Swiss private banks were running the same game at different scales. He also warned that the DOJ had tipped off UBS by sending a target letter two months earlier. Now the bank was destroying documents and banning travel. “I’d regard that as a gross tactical error,” he told them.

He explained how the Qualified Intermediary Agreement, designed to force disclosure of secret accounts, had been completely sidestepped by Swiss banks. The committee asked what he suggested.

“Get serious. Legislation. Prosecution. And some pressure on the DOJ to actually do something.”

The Grenade Goes Off

Within days, Senator Carl Levin was briefed and called for open hearings on Swiss banking. Then Kevin Downing at the DOJ called Birkenfeld’s lawyers in a rage – furious that the Senate was now out front on his investigation.

Both parties in the Senate knew the danger. Plenty of politicians had their own dirty fish in Swiss accounts. But the pin was pulled. There was no stuffing this back in.

For the first time in history, Swiss banking secrecy was about to collapse like a house of cards. And Birkenfeld sat back and watched.

Previous: Chapter 9 Part 1 - Tightrope Next up: Chapter 10 - Hunted

Part of the Lucifer’s Banker Uncensored series