Right, we need to back up a bit here, all the way to 2007 in fact, because that is when these names and their info were stolen from HSBC. The company’s former computer specialist, Hervé Falciani, was behind everything. His concerns?

…he was alarmed at how “banks such as HSBC have created a system for making themselves rich at the expense of society, by assisting in tax evasion and money-laundering”.

Fast forward a few years and we hear the story of how hundreds of clever South Africans have Swiss bank accounts with HSBC – but the list includes “tax dodgers, drug dealers and government officials who used the secret Swiss accounts to launder cash and hide money”.

Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, the bank’s law firm, sent a letter to The Sunday Times saying that the list of clients was stolen from HSBC,  and that making the list public “would be a breach of confidentiality, especially as this would lump these people together with crooks and tax dodgers”.

It is not a crime for South Africans to have a Swiss bank account, and many of the individuals on the list contacted by the Sunday Times said they had disclosed full details of the accounts and paid all the tax they were meant to.

SARS executive Vlok Symington has the list and is “analysing” it. He says it looks like some of the names have “utilised their HSBC accounts to evade local and/or international tax obligations”.

Great then. Name the guys who have evaded tax and done some dodgy things. But don’t go making public the names of people who have lawfully held money overseas.

In the meantime, HSBC head Stuart Gulliver took to apologising sincerely in all the Sunday papers in the UK.

[Source: The Sunday Times]