HSBC bank ‘helped clients dodge millions in tax’
Banking giant HSBC helped wealthy clients across the world evade billions of pounds worth of tax, the BBC has learned.
Panorama has seen accounts from 100,000 clients in more than 200 countries, leaked by a whistleblower in 2007.
The documents include details of almost 7,000 clients based in the UK.
HSBC admitted that some individuals took advantage of bank secrecy to hold undeclared accounts. But it said it has now “fundamentally changed”.
The bank now faces criminal investigations in the US, France, Belgium and Argentina.
HSBC said it is “co-operating with relevant authorities”. But in the UK, where the bank is based, no such action has been taken.
Offshore accounts are not illegal, but many people use them to hide cash from the tax authorities. And while tax avoidance is perfectly legal, deliberately hiding money to evade tax is not.
India’s finance minister Arun Jaitley has said that all Indian names on the list will be investigated, although he cautioned that some accounts might be legitimate. A current inquiry looking into more than 600 people who hold accounts overseas, will now be widened to look into the the current list of names.
The French authorities concluded in 2013 that 99.8% of their citizens on the list were probably evading tax.
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