HSBC said it would pay a fine of 40 million Swiss francs (US $ 43 million), according to the Public Ministry to end the Swiss investigation into money laundering and tax evasion in the bank branch in European country. The attorney general said Olivier Jornot have put an end to proceedings initiated in February to investigate the bank’s practices. The scandal of tax fraud and money laundering became known as “SwissLeaks.”
The bank said in a statement that the payment is to compensate the authorities for organizational failures of the past and that no criminal charges would be presented. In the statement, HSBC also said that improved practices to prevent customers from using the bank “to evade taxes or launder money”, and drastically reduced the number of accounts, from 30,000 to 10,000.
Data from SwissLeaks were leaked by a bank employee and are analyzed by a group of journalists from around the world, called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). Since February, the consortium began to disclose reports that HSBC would have helped clients to hide billions of dollars in the European country between 2006 and 2007.
According to the French newspaper “Le Monde”, which initiated the investigation into the case, about 180.6 million euros belonging to more than 100,000 customers and 20,000 corporate transited between November 2006 and March 2007 by Swiss bank accounts, hidden behind offshore companies.
The case began in late 2008, when the former employee Herve Falciani handed HSBC computer files of the Swiss subsidiary to the French authorities. His act has allowed several investigations were opened in Europe, especially in Spain and Belgium. In France, the judges relied on the help of customers that have appeared in the archives and who denounced the bank’s practices.
In Brazil, at the end of March, the Internal Revenue Service received 8,732 electronic files of HSBC, which are investigated by a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI).
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