Swiss authorities on Wednesday raided British banking giant HSBC’s Swiss unit as part of a money laundering probe into the bank that has been accused of helping clients to dodge millions of dollars in taxes.
The investigation comes just days after HSBC Switzerland became the center of a global scandal following the publication of secret documents claiming it assisted many of its wealthy clients in thwarting the taxman.
“A search is currently under way in the bank’s offices,” Geneva’s top prosecutors said in a statement.
Photo: EPA
The search and money laundering investigation was launched “following the recent revelations related to HSBC Private Bank (Switzerland),” they added.
The cache of files, made public in the so-called SwissLeaks case, claimed HSBC’s Swiss private banking arm helped clients in more than 200 countries evade taxes on accounts containing US$119 billion.
The files provided details on over 100,000 HSBC clients, including people targeted by US sanctions, suspected arms dealers and drug traffickers. A wide range of celebrities, politicians and business leaders were also named, although their inclusion does not necessarily imply wrongdoing.
The documents, originally stolen by former HSBC IT worker Herve Falciani in 2007, alleged that billions of dollars transited through the bank as clients from around the world tried to dodge taxes in their home countries or laundered dodgy proceeds through offshore shell corporations.
Falciani told Swiss television RTS late on Wednesday that he was ready to help the Swiss authorities in their investigation against HSBC in return for “safe passage.”
The Swiss have charged him with data theft.
He said he would cooperate with the Swiss in the same way he has with the Spanish authorities by sharing information through the “cloud.”
Following the raid, HSBC Switzerland said: “We have cooperated continuously with the Swiss authorities since first becoming aware of the data theft in 2008 and we continue to cooperate.”
According to Swiss law, a bank can be held responsible for “aggravated money laundering” if it does not take all the necessary measures to ensure such infractions do not take place within its institution.
Geneva canton prosecutor-general Olivier Jornot and another top prosecutor, Yves Bertossa, were heading the HSBC investigations.
They said the probe initially only targeted the bank itself, but warned that “depending on the evolution, the investigation might be broadened to include physical persons suspected of committing or participating in acts of money laundering.”
Anyone found guilty of such crimes could face up to five years behind bars as well as large fines.
The SwissLeaks documents were obtained by French newspaper Le Monde and shared via the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with more than 45 media organizations worldwide.
As soon as the documents were made public on Feb. 9, calls arose for a Swiss probe against HSBC Switzerland, which is already facing prosecution in the US, France, Argentina, Spain and Belgium. Switzerland had so far only launched an investigation against Falciani.
Falciani himself said last week that the media reports on the documents’ contents were based on just a fraction of the files he handed over to French authorities.
“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” the 43-year-old Franco-Italian told France’s Le Parisien newspaper.
Falciani remains wanted on data theft charges, but France and Spain have offered him protection by refusing to extradite him to Switzerland.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”