a series of some of the biggest and most important banks in switzerland. that is until he saw that international law was being broken. bread mercantile then brought down not just money laundering and income tax evasion in swiss banks. he brought down money laundering an income tax evasion, period. it's because of brad birkin felt that the wealthiest people in the world can no longer avoid paying the taxes that the rest of us must pay by hiding their money in numbered accounts and the world's financial centers. and he paid for that public service with his freedom. when this was finally over, berkin felt published a memoir of his experience called lucifer's banker. the book has already been translated into more than a dozen languages and has become an international best seller. the accompanying website contains the primary source documentation about the case released to the public by wikileaks, what it shows is a pattern of corruption and deceit among officials in both the u. s. and swiss governments and the length to which they went to protect the rich and famous from prosecution. we now when a bring in the guest of the hour, brad berkin felt. so we're going to start brad by talking about how you got into this position in the 1st place, how you became a whistleblower. we'll start off with this with your pre whistle blowing life. you had a good life. you were a successful international banker. you would work for some of the most important banks in the world. you were making plenty of money. but then you saw something that bothered you and you decided to do something about it. walk us through how that happened. certainly. well i, i worked in switzerland in the plaza banking sector with credit suisse barclays, and yes, and my last employer, u b. s, i was a director there in cheapest, switzerland. and what we were doing were, were covering the u. s. market out of switzerland. so we had offices in gano, geneva, and zurich, and we would travel every quarter united states see existing and potential clients . anyways, what would happen is the bank would promote this, obviously to bring in more money to invest and to have net money. so over time, what has happened was what we didn't trust was totally legal. we were following swiss law. i was a resident there, i had a work permit there. and what they had done was essentially known that what we were doing was a gray area mean traveling us because we weren't license. if you see license to give investment advice and so forth. so, mysteriously they slipped in a 3 page document to our intranet. the internal computer system and my colleague brought it to my attention one day and i was a bit flustered by it because it look, i'm very busy. well, what you have to show me why it's important. in this 3 page document, we were never told about it, and we will never change on it, which is a big no, no. so anyways, i will show me where you got this doctor. i've never seen this and he showed it to me on the internet. and i said go back to desk, i'll talk to you later. and i printed it off twice. and i read it. and it was shocking because essentially what this we page document said was what we were doing was not ok. and you were breaking the law. so really what the bank was trying to do with being greedy have us do this business, but putting all the risk on us and saying, you know, you got to do this. and obviously, you know, the levels you have to meet for your bonus and promotion all that they're promoting you to bring in more money. so anyways, this document that's actually contradicted everything they would tell us to do. so i went to my boss and i said, well, what the hell is this is not a big deal. this is a very important matter. you're putting everybody at rest and this is not right. and everyone else on the desk was swiss. i was young american. so i thought was happening, it was a c, y, cover your ass for the right. so we got caught. if we got caught, they would have blended on. i said, well, you read the memo, well, you have a trade on it. you didn't tell us about it and you secretly slipped it in the internet and you always say you have to know everything on the internet. well, so i made a big to do about it and i said, ok, you're going to play that game. so i immediately as a sure, as a director of the bank, i sent it to the head of my legal department and i said to have my compliance department to different areas. and so i need the document that email i sent and then printed it off and sent it also by intra office mail. so you can't claim you didn't get it. well, i did that for one month. and there was no answer which is very bizarre. as a director of the bank, you always go to legal compliance and try get the answer if you have a question. so then i sent it the following, no answer. so and sent it by inter office as well. so for me, i knew what was happening. it was sort of a set up and i saw what the bank was going to do. so i sort of check, made them and said ok, understood, taken documents out of the bank. i wasn't stealing documents, i took documents that were given to so that's my property. everything from powerpoint presentations to accounting, phone, records of bankers. everything that you could piece and puzzled together to show what i was saying was correct. and then the 3rd month i sent it again and there was no answer. so then a week or 2 later i came in and i resigned. and they said, well, why resigning as a, please don't play that game with me. you know exactly what's going on here. and i, one of the answers 3 page document is that, well, you'll never get an answer. i said, well, and yes again, you will get an answer and i'll make sure of it. so what happened was, i resigned and actually i then complained to the board of directors, the back i said, i certified now to every member of you, be a sort of directors and zurich. and now to your problem your, you've been informed, you know, this is wrong and i'm holding you accountable. and there cause such a nuclear bomb in the batch. every one was panicking. now at this point, i'm outside the bag because i believe the bank and they don't want you to work there anymore. when you resign and you're still being paid in switzerland, called gardening, as if you would sit in your garden guard. but i was paid for 6 months and i did this quite quickly knowing that i had all the facts, i have my lawyer in geneva and he said, yeah, you can't work under these conditions. so they called an investigation and they asked me to help them. so i said you need me to help you tell you how you're breaking the law. wonderful. so i met with done with my attorney and i gave them some correct information on some incorrect information just to test. then about a week and a half later i met with some of my colleagues who was to work at the bank, a bar or something. and i said when they talk about and all the things i mentioned, they didn't, they didn't investigate. so what do you mean is not in talk about that, but that's what i told them. so obviously this was another cover up even though it was put right under their noses. so that's when i went and picked up and i went to u. s. government hoping that my own government would actually embrace me with the most significant, unprecedented tax scandal in the world. and that is what you did. you went to the us treasury department, you performed what many of us believe was a national service by reporting this evidence of waste, fraud, abuse and illegality. but then the u. s. justice department came after you. how did that happen? what was going through your mind at the time? well, here's the problem. i think for most of your listeners, if they don't understand what's the point it's, it's a real education in what whistleblowers like yourself on went through. meaning you're trying to do the right thing when you see something wrong. i mean, that's a human trait. and essentially what i was trying to say was, i tried to fix the problem internally. i wasn't fired, i quit. and then i then continued it with the board of directors and then and so forth. so by going to my government, i think it will, law enforcement certainly going to be interested in this and so well the opposite was true. i was a little bit naive in that sense. meaning one, why didn't they uncover? where was the d o j for the last 2 years? that's the 1st question. the 2nd question is, as a whistleblower, they can't take the credit. and the point being that maybe they want this to continue because some of their very rich donors, not just a d. okay. but the administration at the time i would want wouldn't want their rich and powerful friends expose and i'm thinking of myself, wait a minute. this is crazy, so you know, it's going on. here's a guy that comes in, it gives you the keys to the kingdom and you attack him. and so i 1st, i couldn't find a law firm in washington that wasn't conflict because u b. s. had them all retainer that was and the 2nd thing was i had to go with a 2nd rate firm. unfortunately, i didn't think the us was going to be my problem. i thought the swiss government or this was banks and even the us would be the problem. so that's really where the crux was and i came in in good faith to drive to the right thing and they kept yelling at me and they were hostile towards me at the very beginning. and i said, look, i can't give you names of clients until you give me a subpoena. so we're not going to give you immunity. i want to give you a subpoena. i said, well, you're not getting the names. and we are going to fisticuffs in deal headquarters, i'll never forget it. and what really made me wonder was i said now i'm really in this net deep, but i still held my ground as you know, i'm gonna hold firm on this. and ironically, later, once the investigations and sofa started in senate and u. b. s is called to testify, they give the same answer. we can't give you the names until we change the laws in switzerland and parliament in zurich, shane law in order for them to give up the names of the u. s. government. so what's different about what i said, these are the what they said, nothing. same answer. because you would go to jail for breaking bank secrecy where i live. so really what was going on here was the d o. j was furious and hate with the war. they're very hostile towards them. we don't like them, they don't get the credit. as i said before, and i ultimately what us senate with a gave me a subpoena which gave me the ability to give up the names. so i met with the senate for 10 out. i met with the i arrest many hours. i met with the a c c, but the da hated, that's why they couldn't compartmentalize it and they couldn't take credit. so what do they do? all this go attack this guy, make him the bad guy just like you don't make one guy. the bad guy, even though all these other bad actors are out there, my boss is able to for 1020 years and had been doing this. and i was the one about the church come forward and say no, this is wrong. oh, that's really the essence of how the d o j. and as we even see today in washington, the d o j is infested with corrupt people who are incompetent and complicit and criminally involved. brad, what was the government's goal? do you think and going after you rather than the people who had actually been breaking the law and were any of the tax beaters ever prosecuted? yes, the taxes, some of them were very few. and there's something called the offshore voluntary disclosure program. and with that, you're allowed to come in and come and honestly tell them about your account and pay, say 30 percent on the high watermark if your chance, let's just say to the 10 year period. and let's say it was $10000000.00. they would say you're going to pay 30 percent of $10000000.00, even though today's we will keep you anonymous. you won't go to jail in the store. but the problem was they wanted to send a message, all the 19000 millionaires and billionaires to come under that program because we got this bag. no, you didn't get me. i came to you. you never hear a noise just so that's the real row. the 2nd thing here is some of the clients i gave to them, which they are not allowed to come on to the offshore voluntary disclosure program . people like leonard lauder, jack, nanny, kevin costner, all these people have never been prosecuted. why? so these people and many others were given the secret anonymity and be able to walk free because the deal you didn't want to give me credit. so you can see some loss for some people, some loss for others. it's a double system and it's, as you've seen today in washington, d o j is to close it in criminality. so my whole point here was ok, you're going to make one guy, the bad guy, but yet you're not doing your job and indict 900000 people in the head of the iris state it in the u. s. senate under oath that if we had name or an ongoing investigation, you're not allowed to come into the program. well, then indict them. how have your revelations change the banking industry? i imagine there have been big changes. well, quite frankly, unfortunately, the senate doesn't understand international finance and the laws, the passages that for instance was the disaster. it essentially was put in place because of me. and what happens with that is it just made foreign banks report back to united states, everything about an american plan, whether it's hong kong, south africa, switzerland or wherever. the problem here is so what i did was so unprecedented in historic, they change the treaties in switzerland. they changed the laws, they actually went to parliament and had to change the law, which broke bank secrecy. it's over. and then hillary clinton got involved the secretary of state, get that later where she was working on settling this case. but there's another was a war by the name of julian assange who came up with a very critical document which is on my website, lucifer's dot com. and that document was we can, the cable is a c, a c cable, which i showed you, john, you've seen it before. and this cable essentially said between hillary clinton, her counterpart in switzerland, 3 times in this memo. they said we need a political solution. yes, case. now, nobody was ever supposed to see this document, but thanks to julian associates out there. but more importantly, what they did was they closed down a small company operating in i ran out of switzerland and they took 2 chinese wiggers from guantanamo bay and settled them in switzerland to settle the u. b. s. tack scandal. so what, what is the end result here? what's the message? 350000000 americans got screwed by the obama administration. it's a fact why because they allowed the system to be corrupted so they can protect their rich friends and dis you some other smokescreen to settle this case and bury it under the rug. and that's why they put me in jail to try and shut me up. but the opposite happened. and i did, i wrote my book and did a website and i lecture and that's essentially what i'm trying to do. you know what you now? all right, brad. hang right there will be back with brad broke and fell right after the break . when we come back, we talked to brad burke and felt about how his attorney's continued to fight for him after he went to prison. you've been watching the whistle blowers. 2 2 2 2 2 ah ah ah ah well push it was there, lay it to begin with and then it was part of their original reservation. and it was somewhere in the 1920s that they lost oak flat, but it's always been considered sacred to them a but altogether within this resolution copper project area, there are approximately $800.00 archaeological sites that will be destroyed. oh wow . wow, that is right in the heart of where meaning we're culture, where you know would be the same if you fire bomb the bad thing. i hope that this country recognizes native american ceremonies. ceremony ceremonial grounds, sacred sites. because that's where our hardy said we belong to mother earth. we're doing our own mother. we belong to watch for me. ah. 2 2 2 2 i'm john, curiosity, and this is the whistle blowers. we've been talking with bradley burke and felt a long time banker and seasoned financial expert who brought down money laundering and income tax evasion. bradley berkin told story takes a very strange twist. we've already talked to him about his arrest and why he was arrested. he had gone to the treasury department to report evidence of illegality. and then the entire weight of the u. s. government seemed to fall on his head. why did that happen? well, thanks to wiki leaks, we now know why that happened. you see behind the scenes while brad was making his revelations to the u. s. department of the treasury, hillary clinton, when she was secretary of state, was active at the same time. the united states had several prisoners of weaker origin chinese muslims. they were housed at one torno at the notorious u. s. prison camp there and they needed to be resettled. while the governments of albania and fiji agreed to take 2 weaker is each. there were still 2 that needed to find somewhere to go, and no country wanted them. so hillary clinton called the president of switzerland and said, we want you to take these 2 weeks hours. the president of switzerland said that the country was not interested in taking any wiggers or any other people from guantanamo. this discussion went back and forth for several months until finally hillary clinton sent a cable to the president of switzerland through the u. s. embassy in that country, and she said, we really want you to take these 2 weeks hours. the president of switzerland then came back and said, we'll take the 2 weeks. if you arrest bradley burke and felt to which hillary clinton said, done. and that's exactly what happened, an order went from the state department, specifically from the office of the secretary of state, herself to the department of justice saying, arrest bradley burke and felt an american citizen and charged him with a crime. any crime. it doesn't matter what kind of crime, bradley berkin felt had brought down money laundering and tax evasion at every bank in switzerland. he was to pay for that with his own freedom. it wasn't because he had done anything wrong. in fact, he had done a great service for the u. s. government. it was because hillary clinton needed a favor and that favor was to take to chinese muslims and resettle them in switzerland. it's a sad story, but that's how the world works. and sometimes the little guy gets caught up in the, in the plans of the big guys. that's what happened in this case. bradley berkin felt last 3 years of his life to prison. and it was because hillary clinton wanted him to but don't worry, things got better. now we want to bring back bradley berkin failed, who is also the author of the book lucifer's banker, which is a memoir of his experiences being jailed for whistle blowing on some of the biggest banks in the world read when you were charged and convicted and sentenced. to, to prison, you didn't just sit back and take it, you went to prison, but your attorney's continued to fight for you. and they filed a whistle blower, reward claim on your behalf, that ended up putting you in the guinness book of world records. how did that happen? well, that's correct, and a lot of people assume wrongly that i did this for the money and that's totally incorrect. when i 1st started whistle going back in 2005 and science bank, the law hadn't been cashed yet. the longer passed in december, 2006 when i was long at the bank. so how could i have known that there was some law coming down later in the u. s. senate? so that's very important for your audience to understand. but what had happened was they said, you were given up so much information that the i arrest was employing office, felt compelled, under law, that i was entitled to an award by the unprecedented information which you can go on to my website and see the letter they wrote about it, they said the information i gave was so incredible we never would have been able to one cover it and the prosecutor even said it in front of the judge and my senses. if i hadn't come into the d o j, this should still be going on. so why are you attacking me and putting me in jail? this was the rich and powerful of the that got to the top people and the obama administration. obama himself era called the who represented u. b as in private practice. and human clinton were had her donors protected, said make this guy pay. and so i saw the hand right on the wall, but ultimately i got the largest possible and award. and for that, i was put in the guinness book of world records, which they had to create a whole new section under whistle. and because of me, which i'm very proud of. brad over the past decade, you've helped a lot of whistleblowers to stay on their feet and you're always there to provide advice, encouragement, even legal referrals. i know that you're interested in a more formal way to help and to encourage whistleblowers. so tell us about your plans for the future. well, that's correct john i, i do go out of my way to help others because i know how difficult it is for me, harassment, intimidation, retaliation and so forth. and was of was have a lot of courage to come forward. and there's not many people supporting that you're on an island by yourself. and i think you know what exactly what, oh yes. you know this year, your fresh out of friends as we say, a whistle or, but what we need is, was the boys to make it a better society. and what i said to myself is my case was so historic and it transformed it trillion, literally trillion dollar industry. and we're still feeling the effects today. with the d o j 5100 suspects. we brought back over 25. ready $1000000000.00 to the us treasury and back into america. and that money gets invested tax perpetuity, which means it's multiples of billions that i have said us taxpayer and he was government. and so what i need to do is to get this message out to every person who will listen and who will be rational and to say, why don't you embrace this man? he is an extension of law enforcement. he had the courage to change such an industry, and this was overseas, this wasn't in america, this was overseas money that they could never get to. so now i help people, as you rightly say, when i get them. sometimes lawyers like financial support. it gives them motional support. i also want to get the media involved, or i think it's necessary. and this is what we tried to do. and ultimately i'll be open in our office in, in europe to help your p whistleblowers file claims in the united states that are us centered. bradley bergen cells, thanks so much for joining us. that's all we have for you today. i'm john q reaku and this has been the whistleblower. 2 2 2 2 ah ah, when i was a kid, an engagement across the trail. ah, when so many find themselves worlds apart, we choose to look for common ground. 1950 to you as, as i was returning to peaceful live with the newspapers, didn't report ongoing massacres and the ukrainian ssr. according to intelligence ukranian nationalists and the ukrainian insurgent army, led by roman. she'll give each perpetrated these atrocities for here shortly before the bell was blowing. well, but i shouldn't be so thought knew why it would be wise to review. i wish to preserve, of course we'll do immune avo through the flat of was the head of the n k v d sabotaged department of the time he was tasked with stopping the atrocities in ukraine for a good reason. general sort of blunt was very familiar with the situation. he had experienced fighting the nationalist before the war. get the movie amy yoder coil named lovelyn. she can't get a 0. do it's inevitable. so didn't know creamy but it was black. but rogue and me, the task was tremendously difficult, but pseudo blunt of was determined to completed. he had personal accounts to settle with the ukrainian nationalists with ah, a mutual got a yeah. they got the 3 will read to that share with movable. when they do that with a voltage through we group, where does it got a new mindset ideally, could only by the point it's still been yes. don't you think he got a dish? because well it exactly because it was now you, you can neglect which moves and he's not but i am a with . ready co ordinate i think you just so but i'm genie i fish and i was way with you knew this was so can what's your, what's it after that or what you've submitted your company's done. i'm used to so but on the what the, what is to me ah ah, a yeah. yeah. that's fine. ok. thank you. well i bet you, i'm good. i.