Swissleaks: The dirty business of HSBC – tagesschau.de

Swissleaks: The dirty business of HSBC – tagesschau.de

Date: 08/02/2015 22:00 clock

The banking giant HSBC has for years managed accounts and deposits of tax evaders and criminals. More than 100,000 documents that have evaluated, now show for the first time details of Swiss banking.

By Arne Meyer, Julia Stone, Jan Lukas Strozyk, Benedict Strunz, Petra Blum and Andrew Orth

Corrupt politicians, arms dealers and other criminals have spent years accounts of the private bank HSBC used to launder money to conceal possessions and to evade taxes. The Bank has also known procedures in many cases and still clung to the shops. Numerous German allegedly wanted to hide a HSBC account money before the tax office. This is a record of 36,000 files have to be evaluated in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

athletes, musicians, actors

The documents cover some 100,000 HSBC customers from all over the world, who invested the equivalent of around 75 billion euros at the bank. Main component of the data set are approximately 35,000 internal logs of conversations with customers, showing how HSBC has advised clients for years to hide their money before the tax authorities and disguise investments. These discrete services valued obviously not only wealthy athletes, musicians, Hollywood actor and noble families, but also criminals: In the documents, there are arms dealers, corrupt politicians, traders of “blood diamonds”, even some of the alleged financiers of the attacks of 11 September 2001 . The data set covers the years 1988 to 2007 comes from the Geneva branch of HSBC

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There also dive 2,106 customers in Germany with a total credit of around three billion euros. The German bank account holders include industrialist families, business people and noble families as well as professional athletes, and politicians. For many, there is strong evidence that the accounts have not been known to the tax authorities. A top manager has picked up a large cash sum in Geneva about just before Christmas 2005 and led to the Bank that his mail is not sent to Germany. Also, a nobleman who board at the time a charitable foundation, the post was going to get to their millions of credit not go home.

An equestrian sportswoman has a credit balance of nearly ten million US dollar managed through a shell company in the Bahamas, a former Bundesliga player used for his business a company in London. 229 offshore shell companies that are controlled from Germany, are listed in the data, to 740 so-called numbered accounts managed without a name.

tax inspectors evaluate anonymous accounts and foundations, bank superimposed Post – and cash withdrawals as strong evidence of tax evasion. Many of these clues are also found in the German client again: demonstrate how a tax offense but only on the basis of the tax return. And far from each account in the data set is illegal. Many customers had duly declared banking with HSBC.

customers with great political weight

Many customers of HSBC had great political influence. Former Egyptian Trade Minister Rachid Mohammed Rachid had, according to the documents created more than 30 million dollars. He was sentenced in 2012 in absentia to 15 years in prison for embezzlement and waste of public funds. Rachid allegedly hiding in Qatar. Also Rami Makhlouf, the cousin of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has transferred millions in Switzerland. The businessman was demonstrated in recent years by the US Treasury and the EU sanctions related to corruption. Both did not respond to requests from the ICIJ.

financial authorities from twelve countries have already been retrieved using the information for at least one billion euros in tax revenue. The data comes from Hervé Falciani, a former HSBC employee who copied the record in 2007 and gave it to France. To date, however, is unclear which of the data were analyzed. France had forwarded some countries, parts of the data, in the year 2010, the German Federal Central Tax Office. From here, the data were distributed to the states. . What happened thus remains unclear

A find of the century

The Federal Ministry of Finance said on request: ‘insight into the process errands are not available “. The question of whether the aid HSBC has committed an offense is not yet fully understood. Proceedings against the bank run in Belgium, Argentina and France. The former tax inspector Rudolf Schmenger told: “These documents are a find of the century for each investigative authority It has very rarely revealed the aid of this quality..” The French authorities came after the evaluation to the conclusion that less than half a percent of French customers had their accounts properly declared.

HSBC refuses interview from

The HSBC issued a written statement on the allegations. It states that it had “decisive steps in recent years taken to implement reforms and to separate from clients who do not meet the new HSBC standards, these include those in which we had doubts in connection with taxation. ” The bank had ordered the private customer business and will have parted by his own admission, since 2007 almost 70 percent of its customers. An interview rejected the bank from.