HSBC Helps Clients Avoid Paying Millions in Taxes Fred Lambert - UPI
go to original February 9, 2015

HSBC bank 'helped clients dodge millions in tax' (BBC News)

Britain-based bank HSBC took measures to actively assist wealthy clients evade taxes, according to data leaked by a former employee.

While HSBC previously admitted clients had taken advantage of bank secrecy to create undeclared accounts in offshore locations, documents obtained by the BBC - originally stolen from HSBC in 2007 by a former employee and computer expert working in Geneva - indicate the bank purposefully offered clients ways around taxes.

The leaked data contained information on over 100,000 of the bank's clients and has since been distributed to dozens of international media outlets. The French government said in 2013 that an assessment of the data indicated over 99 percent of its citizens on the list were likely evading taxes. Britain's HM Revenue and Customs received the data in 2010 and assessed its 7,000 listed citizens, deducing that 1,100 had evaded taxes. HMRC collected over $205 million in tax, interest and penalties from those who hid money in Swiss accounts - however, only one citizen has faced prosecution.

HSBC is under criminal investigations in France, Belgium, Argentina and the United States, where last year a federal judge in New York state approved a $1.9 billion settlement over charges the bank failed to monitor more than $670 billion in wire transfers and more than $9.4 billion in purchases of U.S. currency from its branch in Mexico, allowing Latin American drug cartels to launder billions of dollars.

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