France's prosecutors cannot use stolen HSBC client data
2 February 2012
France's Supreme Court has ruled that
information stolen from HSBC Private Bank's Geneva branch cannot be
used in the prosecution of alleged tax evaders.
An HSBC employee, Herve Falciani, illicitly
copied the details of thousands of client accounts in 2007 and took
it to France. The Swiss government issued a warrant for his arrest,
and in 2009 the French authorities used this warrant to raid
Falciani's home and seize the data. Falciani has since been placed
under a witness protection programme.
France subsequently made the confidential
information available to tax enforcement agencies of many other
countries, as well as using it to investigate its own tax
residents, including searching their homes.
However, it now turns out that these searches
were all illegitimate. One of the targetted individuals complained
to France's lower appeal court and in February last year succeeded
in having the tax authorities' actions ruled unlawful. The French
Budget Ministry appealed that ruling but has now lost in the
Commercial, Financial and Economic Supreme Court (Court de
Cassation), the country's highest court. This decision cannot be
challenged any further.
A spokesman for HSBC Private Bank Geneva said:
"We are pleased with the judgment which confirms that the data was
illegally acquired, as we have always maintained."
The Budget Ministry issued a statement to the
effect that the Supreme Court decision would only have a limited
effect by restricting its search powers. It is likely that the
French authorities always knew the information could not be used in
evidence, but have used it to pressurise suspects into making
admissions.
Sources
Swissinfo
Agence France-Presse (in English via MSN)
Romandie News (in French)