Falciani's Tax Bomb

A former employee of HSBC, Hervé Falciani provided French financial authorities with the numbers of more than 100,000 private accounts in 2008, whose owners had hidden their assets in some 200 countries. The total amount exceeded €75 billion. Offshore investments, tax havens, and money transfers using elaborate and completely non-transparent methods have long been common practice at HSBC, the world's second-largest bank. Documents published last February as part of the “Swissleaks” scandal prove that advisors at this financial institution provided valuable information to their clients to enable them to evade taxes in their respective countries. Illegal banking operations...