BRUSSELS: Belgium is hoping to retrieve €540m (£390m) in unpaid tax avoided from money hidden in HSBC Swiss bank accounts.
The new estimate was made by Belgian finance minister Johan Van Overtveldt, and comes after revelations in the Guardian and other publications in February about the way HSBC’s Swiss arm helped customers evade tax.
Newspaper De Tijd reported over 1,000 accounts had been investigated by Belgian authorities, belonging to lawyers, diamond merchants, sportspersons and the aristocracy. So far, the UK has recovered £135m from HSBC clients and France £188m.
The news came as HSBC overhauled its boardroom a week before a strategic review expected to lead to up to 20,000 job cuts. The bank named Irene Lee and Pauline van der Meer Mohr as non-executive directors.
They do not directly replace any individuals on the board, which will now have 19 members. But Rona Fairhead, the former Pearson executive who chairs the BBC Trust, is to leave before next May. Her role has been in focus following revelations that HSBC’s Swiss arm helped customers avoid tax because she chaired the bank’s audit and risk committee at the time the scandal took place.
Other longstanding non-executives on the HSBC board include Sir Simon Robertson, the former Goldman Sachs banker, and Sam Laidlaw, the former boss of Centrica.
Lee – who sits on the board of the Hong Kong arm of HSBC – is a member of one of Hong Kong’s richest families and chairs property developer Hysan Development. She is a non-executive director of Cathay Pacific Airways and China Light & Power and will join the board next month. Van der Meer Mohr is a lawyer and the president of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She will join in September.
