HSBC accused of helping clients avoid taxes in Swiss private banks

Global Business

A new investigative report into HSBC claims that the British bank helped its rich clients around the globe avoid paying taxes. That’s after a former employee leaked thousands of secret documents to the press. The lender is in damage-control mode, but the harm to its reputation may be irreversible. CCTV’s Richard Bestic reported this story from HSBC headquarters in London.

HSBC accused of helping clients avoid taxes in Swiss private banks

A new investigative report into HSBC claims that the British bank helped its rich clients around the globe avoid paying taxes. That's after a former employee leaked thousands of secret documents to the press. The lender is in damage-control mode, but the harm to its reputation may be irreversible. CCTV's Richard Bestic reported this story from HSBC headquarters in London.

The report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists said the bank funneled funds of the rich and famous through secret so-called “black” bank accounts in Switzerland, hiding money from tax officials the world over, according French newspaper La Monde, which is part of the journalism consortium.

“The bank not only turned a blind eye, accepting money of a sometimes dubious origin, which was, in any case, hidden from national tax authorities,” Fabrice Lhomme of Le Monde said.

Headquartered in the U.K., HSBC is one of the big beasts of global banking, and is Britain’s biggest but the second-biggest bank in the world.

The accusations of wrongdoing come from what’s being called the biggest banking leak in history. Thousands of documents from HSBC’S private bank in Switzerland, detailing the finances of the worlds’ wealthiest and, in some cases, most dubious, were handed to the French authorities by a former employee, and then, they were shared among world governments.

“In most of these cases, as far as France’s concerned, prosecutions are already happening, trials are either underway or will be brought against people who cheated the tax authorities. And, as you know, we already have a case against HSBC for its involvement in, or as an accomplice to, this tax fraud,” Michel Sapin, the French finance minister, said.

Questions remain though as to how the former chairman of HSBC, Stephen Green, came to be given a job in the British government and how much he knew about the scandal when he was the boss at the bank.