UBS whistleblower awarded token damages by Paris court

Stéphanie Gibaud: 'They harassed me in order to break me' Antoine Kowalski

A former UBS employee has been awarded the symbolic amount of €3,000 (CHF3,400) in compensation from the French state after blowing the whistle on the bank’s alleged practice of assisting tax evaders in France.

Whistleblower Stéphanie Gibaud had asked for €3.5 million to compensate for the emotional stress she says she was subjected to by UBS, which fired her from her job in marketing and communications at its French unit in 2012. Gibaud argued at the Paris court that she had worked for the state by providing evidence that led to the current court case against the bank.

UBS is facing a tax fraud trial in France that could see the bank fined up to €3.7 billion if found guilty of helping French citizens dodge their tax obligations. UBS denies the charges.

Gibaud refused to obey orders from the bank to destroy documents when she worked there in 2008. Instead, she passed them on to the French authorities, which have used them as evidence in their case against UBS.

On Friday, the Paris court acknowledged that Gibaud could be classified as an “occasional” state worker for her whistleblowing efforts. But it rejected claims that the stress caused was worth anything like the amount that Gibaud wanted.

In 2015, Gibaud was awarded €30,000 in compensation from the bank by a French employment tribunal. She has also written a book about her experiences called “The woman who knew too much”. UBS has rejected the contents of the book as fiction, but lost its case against Gibaud for defamation.

In a swissinfo.ch interview in 2014, Gibaud said that UBS “harassed me in order to break me” after she had turned whistleblower.