HSBC Swiss accounts ‘only the tip of the iceberg’

Media leaks on HSBC accounts held in Switzerland “are only the tip of the iceberg”, Herve Falciani, the former HSBC employee who supplied information on the bank’s clients and their tax situation, has told French daily Le Parisien.

Falciani said tax authorities have had access to much more data than media outlets, including French daily Le Monde and International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Asked if more clients were involved than the 106,000 identified by Le Monde, Falciani said: “Of course, there are many more than the journalists had. There were millions of transactions [between banks] in the documents I gave [to the government].”

HSBC client data obtained by Falciani, who used to work in IT at HSBC’s Swiss subsidiary, is at the centre of a storm over the British bank. On Sunday, HSBC admitted failings in compliance and controls in its Swiss private bank and faces investigation by US authorities and British lawmakers after media reports said it helped wealthy customers conceal millions of dollars of assets in a period up to 2007.