‘Thousands of British clients of HSBC who stashed money in Switzerland are to have their financial affairs probed by the taxman … HMRC has obtained the names and account details of 7,000 HSBC customers from a whistleblower …
‘HMRC has discovered the accounts hold assets of about £13 billion … The British residents are just some of the 79,000 HSBC clients from 180 countries whose identities and account details were on a disk handed to the French authorities by Hervé Falciani, an IT expert who worked for the bank in Geneva several years ago …
‘HSBC, which initially said reports of the data loss were “massively overstated”, was reprimanded by Switzerland’s bank regulator in March for “deficiencies in its internal organisation and IT controls” in relation to the theft. The bank said: “HSBC does not condone or encourage tax evasion by its clients.”’
‘The Sunday Times has also learnt that HMRC now has a list of 500,000 Britons with offshore bank accounts from an array of sources.’
The Sunday Times, 5 June 2011
‘Thousands of British clients of HSBC who stashed money in Switzerland are to have their financial affairs probed by the taxman … HMRC has obtained the names and account details of 7,000 HSBC customers from a whistleblower …
‘HMRC has discovered the accounts hold assets of about £13 billion … The British residents are just some of the 79,000 HSBC clients from 180 countries whose identities and account details were on a disk handed to the French authorities by Hervé Falciani, an IT expert who worked for the bank in Geneva several years ago …
‘HSBC, which initially said reports of the data loss were “massively overstated”, was reprimanded by Switzerland’s bank regulator in March for “deficiencies in its internal organisation and IT controls” in relation to the theft. The bank said: “HSBC does not condone or encourage tax evasion by its clients.”’
‘The Sunday Times has also learnt that HMRC now has a list of 500,000 Britons with offshore bank accounts from an array of sources.’
The Sunday Times, 5 June 2011