A Banking Scandal Unfolds Like a Thriller

In 2004, Heinrich Kieber told a Viennese criminal psychologist that he no longer held the keys to the kingdom of Liechtenstein, one of the world’s leading purveyors of shadowy private banking services to the wealthy. But Mr. Kieber’s promise — that he had returned all of the confidential client data he had stolen in 2002 from LGT Group, the financial fortress owned by the Liechtenstein royal family — was not true. “At the time, we all trusted him,” Wolfgang Mueller, his lawyer at the time, whose fees were paid by a worried LGT, told The New York Times. “But he made a copy.” Mr. Kieber, who is in hiding after selling copies to several foreign governments, is now wanted by Interpol. A former data entry clerk at LGT, he has spawned one of the biggest private banking scandals in years. Nearly a dozen global tax authorities,... [read full story]