(photo credit: Insider Monkey)
From The Guardian (UK):
HSBC’s Swiss banking arm helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars of assets, doling out bundles of untraceable cash and advising clients on how to circumvent domestic tax authorities, according to a huge cache of leaked secret bank account files.
The files – obtained through an international collaboration of news outlets, including the Guardian, the French daily Le Monde, BBC Panorama and the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – reveal that HSBC’s Swiss private bank:
• Routinely allowed clients to withdraw bricks of cash, often in foreign currencies of little use in Switzerland.
• Aggressively marketed schemes likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes.
• Colluded with some clients to conceal undeclared “black” accounts from their domestic tax authorities.
• Provided accounts to international criminals, corrupt businessmen and other high-risk individuals.
The HSBC files, which cover the period 2005-2007, amount to the biggest banking leak in history, shedding light on some 30,000 accounts holding almost $120bn (£78bn) of assets.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
Classy.
The article details how HSBC gave illegal tax cheating advice to blood-diamond dealers, relatives of dictators, drug cartels, arms merchants and other assorted creeps across Europe and the U.S.
They also didn't blush when clients withdrew sums of cash large enough to require a shipping pallet. No questions asked!
We can't let this get swept under the rug - the level of corruption revealed is so egregious, it doesn't matter how 'big' HSBC bank is - it MUST fail, or humanity likely will. It is also extremely likely that the too-big-to-fail banks in the U.S. were/are engaging in similar illegal tax cheating services. Time to investigate...