Yahoo – AFP,
November 14, 2017
HSBC Private Bank, a Swiss unit of banking giant HSBC, has agreed to pay 300 million euros ($352 million) to avoid going to trial in France for enabling tax fraud. (AFP Photo/ FABRICE COFFRINI) |
Paris (AFP)
- HSBC Private Bank, a Swiss unit of banking giant HSBC, has agreed to pay 300
million euros ($352 million) to avoid going to trial in France for enabling tax
fraud, prosecutors said Tuesday.
HSBC was
accused last year of helping French clients to hide at least 1.67 billion euros
from the tax authorities, according to a source close to the probe.
The deal
struck between the financial crime prosecutor's office and the bank is a first
in France under a new procedure that allows companies under suspicion of
corruption or dissimulation of tax fraud to negotiate a fine to stop a case
from going to trial.
The deal
does not include a guilty plea and French prosecutors have now dropped the case
against HSBC Holdings.
Investigators
believe that HSBC's private banking division offered its customers several ways
of hiding assets from the French taxman, notably via the use of offshore tax
havens.
The banking
giant was at first accused of failing in its supervisory role over its private
banking division, but further investigation led to suspicions that HSBC
"participated actively in the fraudulent practices", the source close
to the investigation said.
The probe
named the former chief executive of the bank's Swiss private banking arm, Peter
Braunwalder, and another executive, Judah Elmaleh.
The case
began when French authorities in late 2008 received files stolen by Herve
Falciani, a former HSBC employee, whose disclosures sparked the so-called
"Swissleaks" scandal on bank-supported tax evasion.
The French-Italian
national -- dubbed by some media as "The Edward Snowden of banking"
-- leaked a cache of documents allegedly indicating that HSBC helped more than
120,000 clients of a number of nationalities to hide 180.6 billion euros from
tax authorities between November 2006 and March 2007.
He was
sentenced in absentia in November in Switzerland to five years in prison. The
leaked files led to investigations by tax authorities in several European
countries including, in addition to France, Spain and Belgium.
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