Bank data thief mocks Swiss justice system
Hervé Falciani, convicted in absentia by the Swiss Supreme Court in 2015, still sees himself as a whistleblower who has been wronged.
Switzerland’s request for Spain to extradite him reflects the “injured pride of the Swiss judiciary” says Falciani in an interview published by the Tages-Anzeiger and Tribune de Genève newspapers on Monday.
“Thanks to me, hundreds of tax evaders have been convicted worldwide,” says the French-Italian Falciani, who lives in Spain. The former IT worker at HSBC private bank in Geneva was behind the so-called “Swiss Leaks” scandal on tax evasion.
Falciani stole HSBC data containing more than 100,000 client names and attempted to sell it to several foreign governments. He eventually gave the files to then French finance minister Christine Lagarde – after which they were dubbed the “Lagarde list”.
+ Falciani and Swiss Leaks explained
As he told the newspapers, Falciani continues to see himself as a whistleblower and considers the conviction in Switzerland ridiculous. “Honestly, even if Spain delivers me now and I should end up in jail, do you really think Switzerland would end up as the savior of justice?”
Falciani denies the attorney general’s allegation that he wanted to sell stolen data. He has refused to return to Switzerland to serve the five-year jail sentence. Spain’s Supreme Court has so far declined the extradition request because the deeds for which he was convicted in Switzerland are not punishable in Spain. Most recently, he was arrested in Spain in April, but subsequently released. Over the next few days, a court ruling in Madrid is expected to decide his fate.
Today Falciani works for consulting firms and large corporations as a financial advisor in the areas of customer auditing and fraud investigation. “Even Swiss companies have approached me,” he said.
The data Falciani stole allowed a consortium of several media outletsExternal link to reveal that nearly $120 billion (CHF116 billion) had passed through the HSBC bank in order to avoid taxes or to be laundered via front companies.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.