Hervé Falciani

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Hervé Falciani

Hervé Falciani (born January 9, 1972 in Monte Carlo , Principality of Monaco ) is a French - Italian computer scientist .

Life

From 2002, Falciani worked as a computer scientist and financial expert at the Monegasque branch of the Geneva-based HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) , a subsidiary of the British HSBC bank. HSBC is the second largest bank in the world. During this time he became a cashier at the Société Nautique de Monaco rowing club . In 2006 he moved to the HSBC headquarters in Geneva as an IT specialist for databases . Until 2008 he worked at HSBC.

At the end of 2008, Falciani left for Nice . Focus Online reported that Falciani is said to be living in Nice, France and that an extradition request against him is unlikely. In Switzerland he has been put out to the police for a wanted man. In 2015, Arte published a detailed report on Falciani and the Swiss Leaks scandal. According to a report by ZDF , Falciani lived with his wife and child near Nice under police protection in February 2010. The French judiciary is said to have given Falciani a new identity.

On July 1, 2012, Falciani was arrested in Barcelona. Despite an extradition request from Switzerland, he was released on May 8, 2013.

In 2015 he was sentenced to five years imprisonment in absentia in Switzerland. The court found Falciani guilty of the economic intelligence service in nine cases, including data deliveries to the Federal Intelligence Service in Germany and two tax authorities in Great Britain. He was acquitted of other allegations, including violation of banking and business secrecy and unauthorized data collection. The judgment is final.

Falciani has both French and Italian citizenship.

Swiss leaks scandal

Falciani first hit the headlines in 2009 when, in August 2009, he handed over lists of bank customer data from suspected tax fraudsters to the French authorities . Just as Bradley Birkenfeld informed the authorities about what was going on at UBS , Falciani passed on material about HSBC clients. The scandal documents, published in February 2015, show how bank advisors assisted HSBC clients in tax evasion and money laundering . Customers included members of royalty from the Middle East, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad , China's former Prime Minister Li Peng , stars like David Bowie , athletes like Fernando Alonso and the president of Santander Bank , Emilio Botín . Links to alleged blood diamond dealers and gun dealers also emerged. In doing so, he probably contributed significantly to weakening Swiss banking secrecy , to developments such as FATCA and to the change from a black money to a white money strategy. Tax evaders today often prefer Singapore or other tax havens .

France used this data to initiate tax proceedings against tax evaders. The data was passed on to other states ( Lagarde list ) as part of the administrative assistance. In many cases, France is even obliged to pass it on to each other. In a similar way, France also received data from French tax evaders from Germany in the context of the Liechtenstein tax affair . Switzerland is informed of every transfer from France and received a copy in January 2010.

In January 2010, the name Hervé Falciani hit the headlines again in connection with data from 1,300 bank customers that were offered to the German authorities for 2.5 million euros. According to information from the Financial Times Deutschland , the CD offered is said to come from HSBC and is the same data that Falciani had offered the French authorities in August 2009. However, both Falciani and Berlin government circles denied that HSBC was involved in the German case.

In the meantime, the banking secrecy has been overturned through intergovernmental agreements on data exchange. In more and more countries, based on the data of the Swiss Leaks scandal against HSBC, investigations are being carried out for aiding and abetting tax evasion and money laundering . Wolfgang Schäuble's tax agreement with Switzerland failed due to resistance from the SPD and the Greens .

Web links

Commons : Hervé Falciani  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The honorable Mr. Hervé Falciani in: taz of February 3rd, 2010
  2. ↑ The “data thief” thinks he is on a mission ( Memento from December 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Oliver Meiler in: Tages-Anzeiger from December 15, 2009
  3. ↑ Ex-HSBC computer scientist makes tax evaders tremble in: Focus from February 2, 2010
  4. ↑ Video data thief for reasons of conscience: tax evaders delivered to the knife - report and interview with Hervé Falciani by Stephan Merseburger (February 3, 2010)  in the ZDFmediathek , accessed on January 27, 2014. (offline)
  5. ↑ Spain is examining the extradition of data thief to Switzerland
  6. ↑ Pedro Águeda: Falciani cifra en 200,000 millones el dinero que se evade en impuestos , El Diario , November 25, 2013, accessed on June 15, 2014
  7. ^ Hervé Falciani sentenced to five years imprisonment. In: NZZ of November 27, 2015.
  8. ↑ The judgment against Falciani is final . In: NZZ from May 17, 2016.
  9. ^ Arte: Falciani and the banking scandal
  10. ^ Arte: Falciani and the banking scandal
  11. ^ "Bank data theft apparently systematically prepared" ( Memento from July 9, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), Berner Zeitung, December 17, 2009
  12. ^ "France returns stolen HSBC documents" ( Memento from January 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Stocks, January 21, 2010
  13. ↑ "Confederates see modern form of bank robbery " ( Memento from February 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 1, 2010
  14. ^ "Tax CD: Origin of the data - search for clues with a laughing third party" ( Memento from February 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 2, 2010
  15. ↑ Der Spiegel from December 12, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Falciani, Hervé
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French-Italian computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1972
PLACE OF BIRTH Monaco