In fact, it was a stroke of good fortune. I knew I’d be getting out sooner rather than later; and with Olenicoff’s money leaving my portfolio, it was a good excuse to exit stage left. Not that I really needed an excuse, but in Europe a resignation comes with many benefits, and if the reasoning for it seems sound, the whole thing goes down easily. You get your gardening leave for six months, your base salary, and by law any bonuses owed you still have to be paid.
Over at the Desk the working atmosphere was growing ever more foul, like those oil refineries in New Jersey spewing crap in the air while the governor keeps touting “the Garden State.” For the time being, I wasn’t traveling anywhere outside of Europe, yet many of my colleagues still had to make those hunter-gatherer trips. Incredibly, Martin Liechti was sending out more and more of his “Go get ’em!” memos, while my banker buddies had grown as nervous as cows in the minutes before an earthquake. I felt bad for them all, but over the course of numerous dinners, late-evening drinks, and soirees, I’d been waving my red hurricane flag and warning them to batten down the hatches and prepare for the worst. That was about all I could do.
In July, having heard nothing but crickets from Wuethrich or Frey, I fired off my email again and also sent it by interoffice mail, Three-Page Memo attached. But my in-box remained empty of any replies, naughty or nice, and believe me I was checking it twice. When August rolled around I hit them again. The silence was deafening. “All right, you fuckers,” I said to them via brain waves. “I gave you a total of six chances and you’re treating me like some girl in grade school who wipes her snot under her desk. Watch what happens next.”
With four years under my belt at UBS, I knew scores of private wealth managers like me at all the other branches: Geneva, Zurich, and Lugano. So guess who got copies of the Three-Page Memo, generously shared by Yours Truly? I knew what I was doing, spreading fear and uncertainty like the Black Plague, yet with a definite purpose in mind. I wanted to see how their superiors would react when their loyal bankers protested the knife in their ribs. Well, all my friends reported back to me that their managers danced jigs of excuses and lies, pretending ignorance of the Legal and Compliance warnings, which further confirmed my suspicions. They were closing ranks, leaving all of us out in the cold. Not a damn thing changed; it was business as usual at UBS. None of the offshore antics of any of the desks were modified or dismantled. The bastards wanted their money, and if their soldiers were “killed in action,” so be it.
That did it. I wasn’t going to be carried off the field in a coffin draped with a Swiss flag. In mid-September I met with two different employment law firms in Geneva and told the attorneys my tale. Neither firm knew I was consulting with the other, which I kept in my pocket because I wanted to compare their reactions. Both sets of lawyers said the exact same thing.
“Mr. Birkenfeld, resign from this bank immediately!”
Well, I don’t need to be shot at twice to get the message. Still, it wasn’t an easy thing to do, saying good-bye to the most successful and lucrative years of my professional life. But I took a deep breath and, on October 5, 2005, almost exactly four years to the day of my start date at UBS, I typed up a short letter of resignation and walked it in to Christian Bovay.
“I am shocked, Bradley!” he said. “You’ve done so well with us. I don’t understand.”
I just shook my head at that little weasel, thinking how I wouldn’t miss his raccoon teeth and dandruff.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Christian,” I sneered, and I walked out.
They kept me in my chair for a week while they did all the postmortem paperwork. I took Valerie out to lunch right away because I didn’t want her to hear it from anyone else.
“It’s all so terrible,” she sniffed. “I don’t want to be there anymore. It won’t be the same without you.”
“Hey, cheer up.” I smiled and touched her tear-stained cheek. “We’ll always have Geneva. And besides, I’m not dying. We’ll still party, just not on a UBS expense account.”
But she wasn’t really consolable, and it wasn’t long after that she left as well. I still miss her. She was a sweet kid, a great friend, and the perfect Ms. Moneypenny.
At the end of that week, they summoned me over to the main UBS building for a little sit-down exit interview with Human Resources. The head of HR, Monica Boesch, was in the room, along with this dude known only as “Juerg.” This guy was the intermediary between Christian Bovay and Michel Guignard in Zurich, so I knew the big dogs were concerned. I was pissed before I even sat down.
“Bradley, why are you resigning?” Monica said with phony concern. “We don’t understand.”
I rolled my eyes. “Let’s cut the crap, Monica. I’ve been asking you all for three months now why the hell this Three-Page Memo exists, and no one has answered me.”
Juerg puffed himself up. “Well, you are not going to get an answer.” He looked like a Swiss Shrek, with oversized hands, a pumpkin for a head, and a cheap suit with white socks.
That really pissed me off. I pulled a Birkenfeld on them, got up, and leaned over their desk. They both shrank back in their chairs.
“You are fucking wrong. I will get an answer. I guarantee you I’ll get an answer. But I’m not going to deal with this shit anymore.” I took out my wallet and flipped it open. “Here’s my UBS card and all my credit cards.” I splayed them on the desk like a full house. “And I’m done here.”
I walked back over to our building. When the guard saw my face, he didn’t dare ask for my ID. I went upstairs, shook hands all around, gave a couple of hugs to James Woods and Jacques, winked at Valerie, and took exactly one minute to check over my desk. I didn’t need to take a single piece of paper; I already had everything secretly and safely stored away. I left the bank with only two items—my favorite ashtray and a UBS coffee cup.
I wanted that “Three Red Keys of Corruption” logo sitting above my fireplace like the severed head of a dragon.
I am definitely a big fan of the gardening-leave concept. There’s a time to kill, and a time to chill, and this was going to be six months of the latter. I was forty-four years old and had been hustling a living in high finance around the world for half my life, a high-speed existence of super stress with my internal springs wound tight. During all those years, even when I’d take a vacation, I was always on the lookout for potential clients. Now, for the first time in forever, I was unemployed yet still drawing a salary of about fifteen grand a month, with bonuses still accruing. Technically, all of my clients at UBS were still locked in the Birkenfeld Book until the date of my final paycheck, six months down the road. As long as UBS earned revenues from my accounts, eighteen percent of that would drop into my Swiss piggy bank.
I rang up Thais and suggested a week together in Saint-Tropez, which four years before had been doomy and gloomy with Sevrine on the heels of 9/11. Ever ready to party, Thais informed her bosses that the world of high fashion would have to survive without her talents for a week. She packed up her slinkiest outfits and bikinis and we jumped in my M5 and roared off to Saint-Tropez. Our first day at the beach, my fingers kept twitching toward my cell phone with the urge to call the office and check on my clients. She took it away from me, buried it deep in her beach bag, and dragged me into the ocean. Then she plied me with champagne, dancing, and romance until I finally realized that I was something other than just a Swiss private banker.
It was tough going back to Geneva after that. Winter was coming and even though I love to ski, I wasn’t yet in the mood to freeze. So I turned around and took off for the Philippines and spent the holidays with Mauro, hopping all over the islands in his Agusta helicopter, one party after another. Then I came back for a breather, but that didn’t last long either. Off again, this time to Morocco and a boatload of beauties with my buddy Ladjel. By the time that little jaunt was over, I was trying to figure out how to just retire and spend the rest of my life as a wandering financial philosopher. That wasn’t a profession I’d ever
heard of, but maybe it was time to invent it.
Reality, however, is one of those beasts that can’t be held at bay for long. In February I was back in Geneva, relaxing in the flat I hadn’t seen much of lately, when I checked my bank account, expecting to see my well-deserved, substantial bonus. It wasn’t there. Fuck. Here we go again.
I fired off an email to Bovay, no frills.
“Where’s my bonus, Christian? It didn’t hit my bank account.”
In reply, I got a long email back from Human Resources, with lots of curly language and Monica’s signature. But her basic message was no frills either.
“Mr. Birkenfeld, I am sorry to inform you that you are not entitled to this period’s bonus, nor any thereafter. You have chosen to resign from the bank, and these are the consequences.”
Oh, really? I fired back with both barrels.
“Dear Ms. Boesch, apparently you are misinformed. According to Swiss banking law, which I have studied and researched in depth, the contractual obligations between a financial firm and an employee survive the current status of his employment. The fact that UBS has been paying my annual bonuses without hesitancy or complaint is an irrefutable indication that my performance, from which the bank continues to reap benefits, is still deserving of reward. Therefore, the fact of my resignation does not release the bank of this contractual obligation.”
She didn’t answer me. No big surprise there. But after a day, Bovay sent me one curt line, and I could almost see him sneering like a crazed Swiss leprechaun as he did it.
“You’re not getting your bonus, Bradley. Forget about it.”
I actually laughed. After all these years, you’d think the little weasel would have known me by now. But he probably figured that I wanted to go on living in Switzerland, maybe make a career move to some other bank or financial-type firm. He probably thought that the last thing I would do was take radical action, without giving a shit if I burned every bridge from the Thames to the Somme. He didn’t know me at all. I called up Olivier Chedel.
“Bradley, old boy! How are you? Barclays has never been the same without you, you know. I heard that you and UBS parted ways.”
“We did indeed, Olivier,” I said. “And I’m fine. Enjoying my gardening leave.”
“Very good. And what can I do for you? Are you looking for another position?”
“No, Olivier. Actually, I’m looking for an attorney, the best litigator money can buy.”
“Ahh, blood sport,” he said. “Sounds like a fray’s coming up.” He paused for a moment, then said, “It would be unseemly of me, of course, to recommend someone who’d help you dismember a fine sister institution, if that’s what you have in mind.”
“That’s exactly what I have in mind, Olivier.”
He laughed. “Dr. Charles Poncet. Juris Doctor, that is. You’ll find him easily. And tell him I sent you.”
“I always loved working with you, Olivier.”
“I miss you as well, my friend.”
It took me about five minutes to dig up Dr. Charles Poncet, who had a reputation as a hard-ass attorney and corporate lion-killer. I made an appointment, took along a copy of my UBS contract, plus records of all my salaries, bonuses, and the killings I’d made for the bank. I found him ensconced in a luxurious office of French antique furniture, an impeccably dressed elderly gent with a balding peak, fine wings of gray hair swept over his ears, and a pair of rose-colored glasses perched on the tip of his nose. I told him that UBS owed me a bonus of 600,000 Swiss francs. He smiled like a jackal.
One week later, I sued UBS for a million Swiss francs.
I like round numbers.
CHAPTER 7
TARANTULA
“Let them hate, so long as they fear.”
—CALIGULA, ROMAN EMPEROR
SWISS BANKERS DON’T TALK.
If they do, they can wind up in a cold stone prison for a very long time, until all their clients are dead and there’s nothing left to talk about.
After being sandbagged by that UBS Three-Page Memo and then stonewalled over and over, I was sorely tempted to scream to high heaven and let the whole world know what those bastards were up to. But Swiss banking laws strictly prevented me from taking it public. I knew I’d barely get out a peep before some Swiss Vatican Guard–type goons showed up and dragged me off to jail, where the only ones I’d be able to talk to would be some French-speaking janitor and my attorney. This wasn’t like Boston, just a matter of hiring a couple of clowns. These guys were deadly serious about crushing anyone who fucked with their money.
The other thing Swiss bankers don’t do is sue Swiss banks. It’s not something you do if you’re thinking about ever working in corporate finance or private banking again. In my case, I didn’t give a damn about that; I knew I could still make a living in six different ways. But news of my lawsuit spread through UBS like a California wildfire. A couple of days after Dr. Poncet filed in court in Geneva, James Woods called me up.
“Bradley, you’re suing the bank? Are you out of your bloody mind?”
“Which question do you want answered first, James? It’s ‘yes’ to the first one, and ‘maybe’ to the second.”
“Seriously, sport. You know you’ll never work in this town again!”
“I’ve heard that before. Besides, the bartender over at the Pussy Cat’s a good friend of mine. I’m sure he’ll give me a job.”
“Oh, please!” Then James dropped his voice. “I’m telling you, Brad, the steam’s coming out of their ears over here.”
“Good. Then they’ll pay up.”
“Bollocks! They’ll die first.”
I laughed. “That’s one funeral I’ll really enjoy.”
I could imagine him shaking his head as he hung up. He was right; no one would dare sue a multibillion-dollar worldwide mega-power bank like UBS, the largest financial institution in the world, and think he could get away with it. No one except me.
The thing about suing a major corporation is that with battalions of lawyers they can make the proceedings drag on forever. I knew they’d stall, file for postponements, pull me into endless depositions, and object to every motion. Dr. Poncet had warned me about that, but it was exactly what I expected and had already planned for, and I was looking forward to it. If they thought being sued was my last surprise, they had another think coming. It was time for Phase Three of my assault. It was time to become the scourge of every great financial institution: a pissed-off, dangerous internal whistle-blower.
Yank my tail, you get the horns.
Every major corporation in the Western world has a set of internal whistle-blowing policies. Now, you might think those are designed so that any employee who discovers something amiss can complain to his or her superiors and remain confidential, still hold on to his job, and make sure the company stays on the straight and narrow, right? Well, the reality is that usually when an employee finds himself between a rock and a hard place, with no choice but to whistle-blow, everyone nods their heads and says, “Thank you sooo much.” But after that the guy’s a pariah; might as well have a “T” for Traitor tattooed on his forehead. Folks who whistle-blow internally know their careers within that firm are essentially fucked, which is why such action is as rare as virgins in Paris. Most whistle-blowers never get any kind of reward. They’re treated like snitches: They’re intimidated, threatened, retaliated against, and blackballed. They lose their jobs, lose their finances, their families are devastated and their lives destroyed. Almost nobody does it unless their backs are against the wall.
I, on the other hand, was in a very rare and advantageous position. Technically I was still employed by UBS, out on gardening leave yet still drawing a substantial salary. But I’d already resigned, so what could they do to me? Deny me my bonus? They’d already done that and we were battling it out in court, so they were fucking with a dude who had nothing to lose. Talk about stupid. With all those big-shot finance businessmen at the top of the UBS pyramid, there wasn’t one functioning brain
in the bunch.
One of them, a gentleman named Peter Kurer, was a Managing Director and also General Counsel for UBS worldwide. He had personally authored the UBS internal whistle-blowing policies. There were three long documents, about ten or fifteen pages each: Group Policy, Corporate Policy, and Private Banking Policy. Within those policy documents the procedures for bringing misdeeds to attention and seeking redress were carefully enumerated. Unlike the Three-Page Memo, these things had the UBS logo and letterheads all over them, and they were signed by Kurer himself.
Well, guess who had very nice digital and hard copies of the policies? I wrote a long letter to Kurer, invoking my rights as a UBS employee, shareholder, and internal whistle-blower, and of course I told him exactly why. To make sure he got the message loud and clear, I attached his own policy documents and a copy of the infamous Three-Pager. Now you’re probably thinking he stonewalled me, just like Human Resources had, but I made damn sure he couldn’t. This time I acquired the mailing addresses of every member of the UBS Board of Directors and sent each one a hard copy of the letter and attachments I’d just sent to Kurer—registered mail, return receipts requested. By the way, the Swiss postal system runs flawlessly; their main distribution center just outside Geneva looks like a NASA rocket facility and the postal employees are obsessed with good mail. No one on the board could pretend they hadn’t received their poison-pen letter.
Three days later … Boom! It was like I’d hit them with a nuclear bomb. My friends inside the bank started emailing me from their personal email accounts.
“Brad, you have no idea what’s going on in this bank now!”
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