How the "HSBC Disk" was stolen
19 July 2010
The Wall Street Journal has published a detailed account of how
a small group of HSBC Geneva employees stole private details of the
bank's individual and corporate clients and sold it to the French
government.
Apparently the information was offered in anonymous e-mails sent
two years ago to the German, French and British authorities, under
the subject line "Tax evasion: client list available". It referred
to nearly 79,000 private clients and 20,000 firms (these numbers
are disputed by HSBC).
The principal conspirator has already been widely named as Hervé
Falciani, a Monegasque computer security expert who is now under
French police protection. But the WSJ - whose source is said to be
a French prosecutor in Nice - names another HSBC ex-employee,
Georgina Mikhael, as also involved.
The two allegedly set up a shell company to market the data.
They are said to have hosted a sales presentation in Lebanon to
five leading French and Levantine banks before sending the
anonymous e-mails.
But Falciani is claiming not to have taken money for the
information. He claims the French police seized the disk containing
the data because they were requested to do so by the Swiss
authorities, who had already arrested Mikhael. Both deny any
offences.
According to the WSJ, the sheer size of the HSBC leak is
"acutely alarming to Switzerland's $2 trillion offshore banking
industry."
Source
Wall Street Journal