Stolen bank data mixed into list of French tax dodgers

By John Leyden
The Register
11th December 2009

The legality of a French crackdown on suspected tax evaders earlier this
year has been thrown into doubt after it emerged that stolen data was
among the mix of information used by financial investigators.

A list of 3,000 French nationals suspected of using Swiss banking
secrecy to evade paying taxes included data handed over by a former IT
worker for HSBC in Switzerland - without the bank's permission - to the
French authorities.

In a statement, HSBC in Switzerland confirmed a worker suspected of
stealing information from the bank between 2006 and 2007 was prosecuted
last year. The data involved less than 10 accounts held by Geneva-based
HSBC Private Bank, according to HSBC. It's unclear whether the unnamed
worker involved was convicted of any offence. French daily Le Parisien
reports that the former bank staffer has fled to France and is living
under judicial protection.

French daily Le Figaro claimed on Friday that up to 4,000 French clients
of the bank, collectively holding €6 billion ($8.8 billion) in assets in
Switzerland, were named on the stolen list. Only an unspecified
proportion of those named on the list (which sounds like a data dump,
perhaps indexed by a residential address in France) are suspected of tax
evasion.