(9 Jan 2010)
1. Bradley Birkenfeld getting into car
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Bradley Birkenfeld, former banker and whistleblower
"They gave international clients amnesty so they wouldn''t be charged. They also gave the largest bank in the world, UBS, they rewarded them with a deferred prosecution and they''re still withholding 15,000 client names from our government. The American taxpayer should be outraged."
3. Mid of prison sign
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Bradley Birkenfeld, former banker and whistleblower
"The Bush Department of Justice who was more interested in indicting the whistleblower than getting to the facts. It''s proven. I went to the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission), the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), the US Senate, and the DOJ (US Department of Justice). And before they even knew me, they were hostile towards me as a whistleblower."
5. Mid of car driving off with Birkenfeld inside
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Bradley Birkenfeld, former banker and whistleblower
"This was the largest tax fraud case in the world, and I sacrificed my reputation, my life, my finances, and this is how I get treated? Why didn''t the DOJ (US Department of Justice) uncover this for the last decade under the Bush Administration?"
7. Mid of prison sign
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Stephen Kohn, Executive Director of the National Whistleblower Center.
"The prosecutors made a terrible mistake. I think they wanted to sentence him from day one. They wanted to sentence him before they met him. That''s why they didn''t call him a whistleblower. They wanted to sentence him. That''s why they did not give him immunity. They wanted to sentence him because he was an easy target. But we believe in the long term that given the amount of people that we now know were involved in the scheme, there might be more wrongdoing than we''re even aware of now."
9. Wide of car driving away
STORYLINE:
A key informant in the US tax evasion investigation into Swiss bank UBS said on Friday that his cooperation should have kept him out of prison.
Bradley Birkenfeld spoke as he reported to a federal prison in Minersville, Pennsylvania, where he will serve more than three years after pleading guilty to fraud conspiracy.
The 44-year-old former private banker for UBS AG (Union Bank of Switzerland), said his whistle-blowing exposed "the largest tax fraud in the world" and allowed the US Internal Revenue Service to recover billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Birkenfeld, who handled wealthy American clients from 2001 to 2006, pleaded guilty in June 2008 to a single count of conspiracy to defraud the US and was sentenced to more than three years in prison.
Birkenfeld admitted helping clients hide hundreds of millions of dollars and evade US taxes, but said he had risked everything to expose it, and in return should have received better treatment.
"This was the largest tax fraud case in the world and I sacrificed my reputation, my life, my finances, and this is how I get treated? Why didn''t the DOJ (US Department of Justice) uncover this for the last decade under the Bush Administration?" Birkenfeld said.
His sentence has drawn criticism from whistleblower advocates who say Birkenfeld''s exposure of tax evasion should not be treated so harshly.
Last year, the Swiss bank paid a 780 million (m) US dollar fine to the US and agreed to turn over the names of 4,450 suspected tax dodgers.
Stephen Kohn, Birkenfeld''s lawyer and the executive director of the National Whistleblower Centre, said his client was treated unfairly.
Prosecutors said Birkenfeld initially failed to reveal his own misconduct, something he denies.

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