The Banking Giant That Helped the 1% Hide Billions in Taxes

The banking giant used secret Swiss accounts to help the world’s wealthiest people evade taxes.

By Cliff Weathers / AlterNet 

 

HSBC, the world’s second largest bank, helped some of the richest people in the world stash away billions in assets to avoid taxes. The Swiss arm of the British banking giant encouraged wealthy clients to hide their fortunes from governments and other taxing authorities and helped to make their transactions untraceable.

A group of media organizations, including the BBC, The Guardian, LeMonde, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists obtained documents revealing the complex tax dodge scheme.

The documents reveal that HSBC’s exclusive Swiss bank allowed rich clients to withdraw bricks of cash in various foreign currencies to hide such transactions. The bank also conspired with clients in creating undeclared “black” accounts to hide their wealth from domestic taxing authorities. Moreover, this service was aggressively marketed by HSBC bankers to uber-rich clients, including wealthy heirs, unethical financiers, business executives, Hollywood stars, European royalty and even global crime figures.  READ MORE