Julius Bär as well as select Swiss and German newspapers alleges that Elmer has doctored evidence to suggest the bank engaged in tax evasion.

Elmer was hired by Swiss bank Julius Bär during the early 1980s as a private banker in their Zürich offices.

[4] A California judge had the service provider of WikiLeaks block the site's domain (wikileaks.org) on behalf of Julius Bär on 18 February 2008.

[2][5] In 2008, Elmer released internal bank documents with customer data and other sensitive details to the Wikileaks website.

[6] According to these allegations, Julius Bär held their customers funds by funneling through investment frameworks of offshore accounts to increase profits for themselves and circumvent the Swiss tax authorities.

[6] Julius Bär denied this in a statement saying that all of its activities in the Cayman Islands were legal and did not violate of Swiss banking regulations.

[2] On 17 January 2011, Elmer met with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks at a press conference at London's Frontline Club to hand over two disks in public view of reporters.

[9][10] On 19 January 2011, Elmer was ordered to answer before the Zurich District Court for breach of banking and business secrecy laws as well as a charge of coercion.

[12] Elmer was sentenced to probation for a period of two years and fined about 5,600 euros on multiple counts of attempted coercion, threats and breaching of banking secrecy.

[12][13] The presiding judge believed that Elmer had not become a whistleblower for ethical reasons, but for personal revenge: "You were for many years part of the banking world and have benefited from it.

Elmer was summoned on 16 February 2011 before the court and testified that the disks were empty and thus contained no bank customer data.

The court found Elmer's presentation as "totally unbelievable" and rejected the appeal due to the danger of collusion.

[17][18] Furthermore, the court found that there was insufficient evidence that Elmer authored a "significant threat" against a legal services employee of the bank.

[17][19] In May 2012, the Zurich High Court ruled in an interim decision that three CDs that Elmer is said to have sent to the tax authorities or the business newspaper "Cash" may be unsealed and evaluated by the prosecution.

[20] The criminal chamber of the Federal Court on 10 October 2018 - after a public hearing before judges (lasting 150 minutes - without the parties present) - by 3 votes to 2 gave a groundbreaking judgment of acquittal in the case of Rudolf Elmer regarding violation of bank secrecy, and other matters.

Most importantly, the charge of violation of Swiss bank secrecy alleged against the well-known whistleblower Elmer brought by the Higher Prosecution Office of the canton of Zurich was rejected by the Federal court and the acquittal of Rudolf Elmer by the High Court of the Canton of Zurich was confirmed.

[21][22] The Swiss newspaper Der Sonntag wrote in a December 2010 article that Elmer had confessed to threatening to kill several bank employees.