Famous whistleblower targeted by Feds blasts DOJ, Hillary

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stands with Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, left, at the State Department on July 31, 2009. (Photo: "Full Measure" screenshot)

A whistleblower who was sent to prison for two and a half years after trying to expose powerful tax evaders is speaking out against the Department of Justice and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Bradley C. Birkenfeld turned to the DOJ in 2007 with evidence of 19,000 illegal offshore accounts with Swiss bank UBS. He thought federal investigators would praise him for exposing $20 billion in illegal assets. Instead, they created a case against him and tasked Clinton with working out a deal with Switzerland.

The first banker ever to shine a spotlight on Swiss-bank secrecy spoke with Sharyl Attkisson of Full Measure on Sunday. Birkenfeld said the government targeted him to protect politically-exposed people, or PEPs, as UBS calls them.

"They didn't find me. I sought out the DOJ, the IRS, the SEC and the U.S. Senate back in 2007. And the problem here is that when I gave them that information they were hostile towards me at the DOJ from day one," the 50-year-old former UBS manager said.

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The State Department under Clinton eventually reached a deal in early 2009 for recouping $780 million in lost taxes (which saved UBS $1 billion in profits), and the names of 4,450 tax cheats out of 19,000. Roughly 14,000 individuals would later take advantage of a "tax amnesty" offer by the U.S. government, the New York Times reported Sept. 11, 2012.

UBS was a top donor to then-president George W. Bush in 2007. The bank later donated $600,000 to the Clinton Foundation in 2014 after a deal was struck with the U.S.

Robert Wolf, former chairman of UBS America, was also one of President Obama's biggest campaign bundlers.

Robert Wolf and President Obama golf shortly after a deal between the U.S. and USB was announced, July 2009 (Photo: "Full Measure" screenshot)

President Obama and Robert Wolf, former chairman of UBS America, golf shortly after a deal between the U.S. and USB over tax evaders was announced, July 2009 (Photo: "Full Measure" screenshot)

"This was not a real investigation. This was to cover up for the rich and powerful people in this country. The millionaires and billionaires – and politicians who had accounts in Switzerland," Birkenfeld said. "[Clinton had] no right in getting involved in an international criminal investigation."

Clinton and the Justice Department would not comment for Full Measure's piece.

On July 30, however, a Clinton spokesman told the Wall Street Journal, "Any suggestion that she was driven by anything but what’s in America’s best interest would be false. Period."

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Birkenfeld said the federal government and UBS wanted to protect PEPs in Washington, D.C. The illegal accounts were managed in Lugano, Geneva, and Zurich, Switzerland.

"We were well aware of many people that had accounts at UBS that were giving to political parties. That was a fact. But yet because it was a numbered account in Switzerland, no-one ever thought that they would be exposed. So that's very, very dangerous and something they don't want to come out," Birkenfeld said.

(Photo: "Full Measure" screenshot)

Birkenfeld, who served a 40-month prison sentence in January 2010 at Schuylkill Federal Correctional Institution in Minersville, Pennsylvania, told Full Measure he eventually had the last laugh; IRS grants whistleblowers up to 30 percent of money collected from tax evaders.

The deal between the U.S. and Switzerland eventually netted Birkenfeld $104 million in reward money.

"The vindication of getting the $104 million dollars really makes me smile because what it does is send a message to the DOJ: 'I beat the system – and I beat you.' And now the American people can decide who was right and who was wrong," he said, Full Measure reported.