Tuesday, February 10, 2015

SwissLeaks revelations-

(SGX)The damaging SwissLeaks revelations are rooted in a massive cache of whistleblower data handed to two overwhelmed French reporters who decided they would need the help of an international collective to decrypt it.

A thumb drive containing hundreds of thousands of documents had landed at the front desk of French daily Le Monde in early 2014, days after the paper published an expose about people using Swiss bank accounts to hide money from the tax man.

At the weekend, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published the data, claiming banking giant HSBC's Swiss division helped clients in more than 200 countries evade taxes on accounts containing US$119 billion.

The source of the documents had seen Le Monde's tax story, written by Gerard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, and wanted to "give them a hand," Lhomme told France Inter radio, refusing to divulge the source. The documents were originally provided to the French government by a whistleblower.

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