The Swiss lender HSBC has come under fire after an investigation by a group of international news outlets uncovered that the bank helped more than 100,000 wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal billions of dollars worth of assets. Nearly 500 of HSBC’s customers are Poles, according to Polish media reports, who entrusted the bank with more than $866m.
The HSBC files were obtained and published through an international collaboration of news outlets, including the UK Guardian, Le Monde, BBC Panorama and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The world’s second largest bank by assets, HSBC has officially acknowledged wrongdoing. “We acknowledge and are accountable for past compliance and control failures,” the bank said in a statement. The Swiss arm, the statement added, had not been fully integrated into HSBC after its purchase in 1999, allowing “significantly lower” standards of compliance and due diligence to persist.
