Member Article

HSBC helped wealthy clients "dodge millions" in tax

HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, has helped wealthy clients avoid paying millions in UK tax, according to a report by BBC Panorama.

Panorama has seen thousands of accounts from HSBC’s private bank in Switzerland leaked by a whistleblower in 2007 by a computer expert working for HSBC in Geneva detail accounts of over 100,000 clients worldwide.

The documents include details of almost 7,000 British clients - and many of the accounts were not declared to the taxman.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) was given the leaked data in 2010 and has identified 1,100 people who had not paid their taxes. But almost five years later, only one tax evader has been prosecuted.

HMRC said £135 million in tax, interest and penalties have now been paid by those who hid their assets in Switzerland.

HSBC admitted that some individuals took advantage of bank secrecy to hold undeclared accounts. But it said it has now “fundamentally changed”.

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.

The French authorities assessed the stolen data and concluded in 2013 that 99.8% of their citizens on the list were probably evading tax.

In a statement, the bank said: “HSBC has implemented numerous initiatives designed to prevent its banking services being used to evade taxes or launder money.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .