Executive cheats outed by technician
July 25, 2008 by Shane BorerPosted in: Compliance, Fighting off fraud, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest news & views, Whistleblowers
Here’s another reason to maintain good relationships with your IT people: There’s more at stake than slow Internet access and a broken printer.
Heinrich Kieber, technician for LGT, a country-owned bank in Liechtenstein, isn’t going to be on many CEOs Christmas card lists this year. That’s because the disgruntled worker illegally downloaded and sold information from the bank’s systems — and IRS, along with tax authorities worldwide, couldn’t be happier.
Three CDs worth of data reveal that hundreds of American tax cheats, including many prominent CEOs, had money stored away in secret accounts at the bank.
For these cheaters, the cat’s out of the bag in a big way — Kieber reportedly sold the info to tax authorities in 12 countries, including the U.S., Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy.
U.S. laws allow whistleblowers to collect up to 30% of taxes recovered with the help of their supplied information, but it hasn’t been made clear exactly why Kieber decided to steal and sell the data.
Since Liechtenstein currently brands him as a thief for violating the country’s bank secrecy laws — not to mention the hundreds of cheats who are coming under fire from IRS — Kieber is in hiding, but will testify to the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations via video-conference.
Tags: Bank technician, IRS, IT, Senate, Tax cheats
December 6th, 2008 at 2:58 am
If you are in IT, you are involved in all aspects of the business. It’s about time someone noticed it.
We started warning them about security 40 years ago. No one listened.
They invented ATM machines–and didn’t bother to insure against loss until they’d been hit hard.
It is a wonder that most businesses stay afloat at all.
We are now over the crest of the first small waves of a vast sea change in the way things work.
There are recording devices everywhere in our cities, huge databases cross-referencing all our likes, dislikes, credit and debt.
We have two, and only two choices:
1) We can allow a group or groups to control and have access to all that data and keep it secret–and they will run everything.
2) We can work to make certain that all of that data is available to everyone.
The Freedom of Information Act was and is an attempt to permit the citizens to access their data (citizens paid for it, and citizens have a right to know what is being done.
Still, after 40 years, over a third of agencies break that law on a regular basis.
Secrecy is the best friend of Tyranny. Woo yee! patriotism is another, along with religious and racial intolerance. Obsession with crime and punishment, control of the media and toadyism round out the crew.
Yes, as hard as it may be for some of us, exposing everyone’s warts and foibles is our best defense against slavery. We will no longer be able to pretend we are perfect.
We will have to eliminate nearly all of the laws about “sin”–which is no business of the government’s anyway.
After a bit, we’ll see people again, not as the things we know (and knew before, but pretended we didn’t,) as a real people, imperfect, troubled and a bit weird compared to each other.
When the Kinsey report was published, Americans were shocked (though much of Europe already knew about that stuff–the Germans are quite up front about sexual practices and other deviances from the “norm.”
Millions of people who had spent their lives feeling ashamed because what they did for sex wasn’t part of what you were “supposed” to do suddenly found that they were very much not alone.
This coming era of transparency will be very rough on a lot of people–mostly those who make and then ignore the rules.
We won’t let people in collection join the military because they might be bribed. But we give known thieves enlistment instead of prison. And then catch high ranking officers taking bribes in the $100,000’s and up.
We test the poor shmuck cleaning floors at Wal-M*rt for drugs, but we cannot test our elected officials–the people who can make life&death decisions for millions.
It’s been said that people get the government they deserve. In our case WE are the government, and those bodies behind the desks are OUR employees and servants. They exist to serve US not to order us around and live off of our work.
Herr Heinrich Kieber treated these crooks with kid gloves. He had millions of dollars worth of information which could have been used to wipe out their illegal accounts, and left them to squirm because they dare not squeal or they would be caught–and then send copies of the information to their superiors and others.
And thats why Herr Heinrich Kieber will not be a wealthy retiree this winter. Not creative enough.