Industrial, celebrities, wealthy heirs, arms dealers and drug use, students or housewives. We find all kinds of profiles among the client files of the Swiss subsidiary of HSBC bank that were made public Monday by a consortium of international press dubbed “SwissLeaks.”
Celebrities rich heirs and sports
We meet here the stars of the stage, models, actors, fashion designers and sports, as Christophe Dugarry, world champion in 1998, or the F1 driver Fernando Alonso . The name of the heir to the French dressmaker Nina Ricci has been advanced. His tax evasion trial should also be opened next week. But for many of them, the situation was rectified, they said. As Gad Elmaleh, who had a little hidden stocked account.
traffickers of weapons and diamonds
The journalistic investigation confirms that it is the craftsmen Diamond in Antwerp, Belgium, which have benefited the most from the system. According to the daily Le Soir , a member of the consortium, at least 916 diamond among the 3002 Belgian appearing in the files. It is in Belgium that HSBC Private Banking was charged with fraud and money laundering in November 2014. The bank also hosted on behalf of a Guinean company that supplied weapons to Liberia in 2003, during the civil war. The account has been temporarily blocked, then it was reactivated. In 2007, he was credited with 7.14 million dollars.
The strange category of “housewives”
As noted by Slate.fr , the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was also interested in the number of “housewives” listed in the HSBC files, which compiled all sorts of information about tours in Switzerland of its customers. Quite surprising especially as the ICIJ noted that the category “housewife appears at an incredible rate, more often than more logically profitable professions as doctors, lawyers or diamond.” They represent more than 7300 customers in the total number of HSBC hidden accounts owners. Far ahead of the categories “Students” and “non-professional” who still represent between them approximately 4000 clients!
These housewives, some fact of Mary Wells Lawrence Besides some of the clients. 86 years old, she is famous for having founded an advertising agency in 1966. It is also his slogan “I love New York.” There are also the Saudi princess Lolowah al-Faisal al-Saud, Thai businesswoman Khunying Patcharee Wongpaitoon – implicated in his country in a financial crime case – but Arlette Ricci, the heir of the French seamstress Nina Ricci.
Captain Kirk, Captain Haddock and Zidane
All sorts of tricks are used by customers. Best to hide their identity, some used – in addition to accounts linked to a number rather than a name – code names. The British newspaper The Guardian has found a Captain Kirk (named after the character in Star Trek ), a Captain Haddock, or a certain Mister Shaw. The names of players such as Cruyff or Zidane have even been used.
Donors al-Qaeda
In 2002, US investigators found a list of 20 richest Arabs suspected of donors al-Qaeda. Americans baptize this network the “golden chain”. Thirteen years after this discovery, SwissLeaks reveals that some alleged financiers had placed funds at HSBC Switzerland. These people are “sheikhs” and the “princes” who “do some business magazines as managers or owners of large conglomerates,” writes the SonntagsZeitung , a Swiss weekly.
The economic world
The Russian daily Vedomosti , associated with SwissLeaks initiative, focused on “millionaires officials” Russian involved. A list of 740 names was established, but the names of the “first character of the state and major political figures” have not been found. Vedomosti speaks mostly of people who worked in the state apparatus and large public companies or banks.
In any case, it is n officials ‘occupy more than their job or officials who are no longer in control of Russian public companies. If media partners have made a list of big bosses, people much less for are also concerned. Le Monde reports that among the French customers, “after the HSBC employees, traders, business leaders – especially in the textile – and professionals are the most represented is well over a hundred. Doctors and fifty lawyers, “wishing to whiten their undisclosed fee.
Policy
The Swiss newspaper The Sunday Morning has investigated about on his customers “very political” HSBC. He cites the case of a Lebanese minister, who is also a successful entrepreneur. He would have had a HSBC account $ 42 million. The minister was accused by the Lebanese press of corruption, particularly in the context of bank failure in 2003. Another Lebanese minister had some $ 75 million at HSBC Switzerland. An investigation was opened against him in Lebanon in late 2013. Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Syrian President Bashar Assad, had $ 27 million at HSBC. He was accused of corruption by the United States since 2008.
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