“SwissLeaks” HSBC admits “failures” of its Swiss subsidiary – Challenges.fr

"SwissLeaks" HSBC admits "failures" of its Swiss subsidiary – Challenges.fr

LONDON, Feb. 9 (Reuters) – British bank HSBC has admitted “shortcomings” of its Swiss subsidiary, Sunday, after the revelations of several newspapers, including Le Monde, on a tax avoidance scheme large-scale set up in the 2000s in favor of its wealthy clients.

According to Le Monde, which has dubbed his investigation “SwissLeaks” HSBC Private Bank has accepted and even encouraged a “gigantic fraud on the scale International “wearing during the only period from November 2006 to March 2007, the sum of” 180.6 billion euros that would have passed in Geneva by the accounts of more than 100,000 customers and 20,000 offshore companies ” .

The French newspaper said it had obtained from sources which it preserves the anonymity of all data stolen by Herve Falciani, a former employee of HSBC Private Bank, and to have shared with media sixty International via ICIJ, a consortium of investigative journalists.

“We recognize and assume responsibility for past failures of compliance (” compliance “) and procedures control, “responded the British bank in a statement.

HSBC explains that its Swiss subsidiary has not been fully integrated into the group after its acquisition in 1999, and therefore, the levels of compliance were subsequently and sustainably “significantly lower” than the norm.

According to information published by Le Monde and, in Britain, the Guardian, HSBC Private Bank in particular helped clients evade certain taxes, such as the European tax ESD, established in 2005, hiding “their money behind the screen of offshore structures generally based in Panama and the British Virgin Islands.”

She also authorized to regularly remove large sums of money in cash, including foreign currency which they had no use in Switzerland.

In its press four pages, HSBC puts these practices on behalf of the functioning of the Swiss private banking system, which has long cultivated secret, “which could have led to a number of customers may not have fully complied with their tax obligations.”

It adds that its Swiss subsidiary has in recent years undergone a “radical transformation” and that such tax evasion practices are no longer relevant.

The number of accounts HSBC Private Bank has increased from 30,412 in 2007 to 10,343 at the end of last year, says the British establishment that provides fully cooperate with authorities investigating this matter

(Steve Slater.; Tangi Salaün for the French service))