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BUSINESS EXECUTIVES, POLITICIANS, rich heiresses along with alleged arms traders, drug traffickers and al-Qaeda backers figure among the HSBC clients listed in secret bank documents that Monday sparked a global outcry over tax dodgers and the banks which help them.
The documents claim HSBC’s Swiss banking arm helped clients in more than 200 countries evade taxes on accounts totalling $119 billion (104 billion euros).
Here is a profile of some of the more than 100,000 customers listed in the “Swissleaks” cache of secret files, stolen by an IT worker in 2007 and passed to French authorities.
Inclusion in the list does not automatically imply wrongdoing.
Nationalities
Swiss clients had placed the most money with the Geneva-based bank, at $31.2 billion, followed by British nationals at $21.7 billion, Venezuelans at $14.8 billion and Americans at $13.4 billion.
Israel, which came in sixth with its nationals holding $10 billion in HSBC Switzerland accounts, found some of its wealthiest citizens on the list, including billionaire businessman Beny Steinmetz and his brother Daniel, who made a fortune in diamonds with more than $100 million to their names.
Stars and wealthy heirs
Film stars, super models, rock stars and fashion designers were also clients, although many of them maintain they have already come clean and made amends for previously hidden accounts.
Arlette Ricci, the heiress to French fashion designer Nina Ricci’s estate, will go on trial for fiscal fraud in France next week.
Arms, drugs and diamond traders
The Swiss daily Tages Anzeiger (TA) focused yesterday on some of the suspected criminals on the list.
It mentioned the case of a Belgian-Lebanese diamond trader in Antwerp who has since been jailed in Belgium for trading in illegal diamonds.
The man had been able to open an HSBC account despite UN accusations in 2001 that he had breached an international embargo on dealing in so-called “blood diamonds” from Sierra Leone.
The account remained open despite a fiscal fraud probe in 2005, and between 2006 and 2007 the man deposited more than $2.8 million, the TA newspaper reported.
According to Belgian daily Le Soir, at least 916 of the more than 3,000 Belgians in the files were diamond merchants from Antwerp.
HSBC’s Swiss arm also held an account for a Guinean company that was delivering arms to Liberia in 2003, in the middle of a civil war, TA reported.
That account held $7.14 million in 2007, the documents show.
The Swiss daily also highlighted that a list of French client names had been compared to a Europol database, resulting in 120 matches, including numerous alleged drug traffickers.
Bin Laden’s ‘Golden Chain’
Also reportedly figuring on the client list are members of Osama bin Laden’s known family and members of the so-called “Golden Chain” of wealthy Arabs suspected by US investigators of being al-Qaeda’s main backers.
According to the Swissleaks files, an account held by a 70-year-old Saudi national, who is the head of an international conglomerate and reportedly connected to the “Golden Chain,” was bulging with up to $70 million.
Politics
Numerous politicians, their family members and associates also figure in the files.
Rami Makhlouf, cousin of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is facing corruption charges in the United States, is listed with an HSBC account worth $27 million.
Former Egyptian trade minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who fled Cairo during the 2011 uprising against former president Hosni Mubarak, is listed as having power of attorney over an account worth $31 million.
And Belhassen Trabelsi, the brother-in-law of Tunisia’s ousted longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, figures on the list with an account valued at $22 million in 2007.
Swiss weekly Le Matin Dimanche also cites the case of a Lebanese government minister and prosperous entrepreneur who the files showed had stashed some $42 million in his HSBC Switzerland account, although a spokesman insisted he had made his fortune before rising to power.
The daughter of a former Chinese prime minister had opened an account in 2001 while her father still held important positions within the Chinese Communist Party, and allowed it to swell to nearly $2.5 million, the documents showed.
The business world
Russian daily Vedomosti said it had not found any of Russia’s top politicians when it trawled through the files but instead located some 740 Russian “millionaire civil servants”.
Most of them had worked for the state or large state-owned businesses and public banking establishments, but none remained in a position of responsibility or at the helm of Russian public companies, the paper said.
British daily The Guardian also revealed that Richard Caring, the owner of numerous chains of restaurants and stores, in September 2005 had withdrawn five million Swiss francs from his HSBC account in Geneva, in cash — enough to fill a suitcase.
Since then, HSBC Switzerland has limited a single cash withdrawal to $10,000.
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I wonder if someone did take him out 30 years ago, would Zimbabwe be the basket case he turned it into, or would some other “leader”, equally malingnant have just taken his place.
It’s tempting to write Africa off, but these things are not inevitable. The neighbours in Botswana were a landlocked, diamond rich former colony. Not an obvious candidate for success. And yet they were, partly because of Seretse Khama’s leadership, but also because people kept voting for him.
Unfortunately, for every relative success story there are 50 failed states. Nation building is hard and requires guts, enterprise, selflessness and vision. Mugabe wasn’t even asked to nation build. He was handed a fully functioning, very rich and successful country and managed to level it in less than a generation. That takes mean spiritness, stupidity, and the most crass selfishness and myopic vision, which, unfortunately, seems to be the calibre of most African leaders. Take and destroy is what they do and in the meantime, the west continues to do what the west does best. Assuage our feelings of western guilt by feeding, clothing and vaccinating the Africans left behind by their very own “leaders”.
We can write much of Africa off if the Chinese economy falters, And also, we can take Australia with it.
Problem with africa is its full of africans
“Unfortunate event”
In who’s eyes ????
Funny that at Mandela’s memorial when the camera would go to different world leaders the crowd would cheer or boo depending on who it was on. Mugabe got a massive cheer and Bush Jnr got a massive boo. Ya no your screwed when Mugabe gets a bigger cheer than ya!
It was an ANC crowd at the funeral & Mugabe was a big supporter if the ANC during apartheid times so I’d be sure that’s why he was cheered rather than for his recent policies.
That says a lot more about the crowd than it does about Bush Jr.
Whatever you can accuse Bush Jr. of, laying waste to his country, starving his people, killing the productive farmers and having an ugly greedy, mean wife isnt among them. An ANC crowd can turn into a vicious mob at the turn of a hair. Being rational abd discerning is not their thing.
Hurricane Katrina anyone? ;)
Sadly, probably the latter.
Problem with Africa is the tribal government system, and the mentality of it’s people.
@coom
Same could be said for a lot of countries..including ours!
Christina who wrote that paper? Dept of the Taoiseach?
While it is true that Robert Mugabe has a few character flaws, it cannot be denied that he is an active leader who stands up for his people. Much better than the shower we have running this country, he is. You can bet Robert Mugabe would have burned the bondholders and sent the IMF home with a flea in their ear.
Pity he didn’t have a fatal “accident” here.
Proably after totruring them first…Thing is we can elect another incompetant shower to govern us.Mugabe is there forever like a big black blood sucking tick on Zimbabwae.But then thats what happens if you let Marxist gun waving loons loose on a perfectly functioning and producing ,albeit not without is fault state.Turn it into a dictatorship that makes the previous oppression by whomever look like paradise.
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