A former Swiss banker provided the names of more than 2,000 prominent tax cheats to Wikileaks, which has promised to quickly release details of the evasion — unlike governments and the media, which apparently buried the scandal.

The former banker, Rudolf Elmer, was once head of the Cayman Islands office of Swiss bank Julius Baer and says he grew disgruntled at how it and other banks laundered money for the rich, including around 40 "pillars of society" and politicians. He said he went publicly to Wikileaks with the data because "his offers to provide the data to universities and governments were spurned and, in his opinion, the Swiss media failed to cover the substance of his allegations," writes the New York Times.

Now, thanks to the Wikileaks connection, he's got coverage in newswires and papers around the world and a possible investigation by Britain's Serious Fraud Office. Which just goes to show that the secret to Wikileaks' success may not be so much its technical prowess or theatrical self promotion as it is a focus on customer service toward leakers.

[Photo of Elmer handing two CD cases full of files to WikiLeaks' Julian Assange during a news conference in London today via AP]