Background, GenevaLunch

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, cleared up some of the confusion that has surrounded the 2008 theft of client data from its Geneva bank and apologized to its current customers at a press conference in Geneva Thursday morning 11 March. A total of 15,000 current clients, slightly less than one-fifth of its customer base of 100,000 clients in Switzerland, were affected when French employee Hervé Falciani, an IT employee, stole data over a period of several months during 2006-08, the bank acknowledged. It noted that the extent of the theft was shown to it only 3 March, a week ago, when the Swiss Federal Prosecutor gave it copies of “a substantal portion” of the stolen data. HSBC says it is now “actively contacting” clients to apologize.

Data was also stolen on additional 9,000 clients’ who have left the bank, bringing to 24,000 the total number touched by the theft. Many of those who left did not have large enough amounts to warrant a wealth management account.

“The bank does not believe that the stolen data has or will allow any third party to access any client account,” HSBC noted in a prepared statement, but it has not said if the French government, which holds the data, is able to identify account holders. France, under pressure from the Swiss government, provided the Swiss Prosecutor with copies at the end of 2009.

The currrent clients all had accounts with the bank before 6 October 2006. No accounts outside Switzerland are affected.

HSBC had until now said that only 10 client accounts were affected.

“The bank is doing its utmost to ensure that this cannot happen again and has already made significant improvements to its security, spending over CH100 million to upgrade systems and improve security.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.