Numbers don’t correspond to files handed back to Geneva bank
Nice, France (GenevaLunch) – The public prosecutor in Nice, Eric de Montgolfier, told a group of reporters Wednesday 14 April that 80,000 account holders have been identified, 8,000 of them French, from the files stolen from HSBC bank’s Geneva offices in 2007. The former HSBC employee who stole them, Herve Falciani, has been given a new identity by the French and he appears to have helped the government decrypt the files.
The figures don’t, however, correspond to those the bank says it found when Swiss authorities gave it a copy of most of the data in March.
HSBC in Geneva said 11 March 2010 that while the number of accounts was greater than the original 10 mentioned in 2009 by the bank, the total number was 24,000, well below the figure provided this week by the French prosecutor. Of those, 9,000 had left the bank, since the stolen data covered accounts that dated back to 2006.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The French public prosecutor in Nice, southern France, Eric de Montgolfier, has revealed that his office is in possession of confidential details of up to 130,000 clients from HSBC’s private banking branch in Geneva. The data was acquired by the French state when Hervé Falciani, a former IT employee of the bank, left HSBC with the details stored on his laptop. Journal de Dimanche reports that 3,000 of the bank’s clients are French citizens.
The whistleblower, who is reported to have received a new identity and is said to be in hiding in fear of his life, told French public television that he acted out of idealism: “Either you bury your head in the sand or you try to do something about it.”
