Word: blowers
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...California-based real estate mogul Igor Olenicoff - owed $7.2 million in U.S. taxes. But at the same time, almost no one in the U.S. government would deny that Birkenfeld was absolutely essential to its landmark tax-evasion case against Swiss banking giant UBS. The former UBS employee turned whistle-blower exposed the previously hidden world of offshore tax shelters, which cheats the Treasury out of about $100 billion a year. Thanks to his insider information, UBS was fined $780 million, and it promised to "exit entirely" from the U.S. tax-shelter business and to provide the names of thousands...
...pleaded guilty to a single fraud conspiracy count; he was sentenced on Aug. 21 in a federal courtroom in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to 40 months in a federal penitentiary (to start Jan. 8). Many critics believe the decision to prosecute Birkenfeld, whom some consider the most important whistle-blower in years, sends the worst possible message to other financial-industry insiders who might be considering coming forward. The Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington watchdog organization that has extensive whistle-blower experience, says a chilling effect is already apparent: a senior executive at a European bank that offers similar...
...nobody will come forward again and disclose information about tax fraud on this scale," says Dean Zerbe, a tax attorney representing Birkenfeld in his dealings with the IRS. Zerbe also served as tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee; in 2006 it revised the tax code to include whistle-blower protections...
...which point some lawyers would have advised their client to cease cooperation - and instead offered a temporary, so-called queen for a day agreement, giving him much less protection for what he voluntarily disclosed. At one point they even dismissed Birkenfeld as a mere tipster, not a whistle-blower. "Those who seek to be treated as true whistle-blowers need to know they must come in early and give complete and truthful disclosures, with no dissembling or holding back or spinning," said John A. DiCicco, Justice's top tax lawyer, in an e-mail to TIME...
...Academy Awards; nor is Cage's work in Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, though the star's intensity as a ? cop deranged by painkillers is fun to watch. But The Informant!, starring Damon as a paunchy, middle-aged, real-life corporate whistle-blower with some weird secrets, deserves the approval of Oscar ? voters. In its oddball, deadpan fashion, Steven Soderbergh's comedy-drama says as much about the chicanery of the American business establishment as any Michael Moore diatribe...