ROME: The Swiss arm of British bank HSBC may have helped over 7,000 Italians, including the ex-Formula One team boss Flavio Briatore, hide their wealth from the authorities.
A data trove of leaked secret bank account files, obtained through an international collaboration of journalists, revealed on Sunday that HSBC’s Swiss private bank may have helped 7,499 Italian customers conceal $7.5 billion (€6.6 billion) in secret bank accounts, according to the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Italy ranked number seven among the countries with the largest dollar amounts in the leaked Swiss files, with the maximum amount of money associated with a client connected to Italy being $1.2 billion (€1.06 billion), ICIJ said.
The documents, which cover a period up to 2007 when they were stolen by Hervé Falciani, a French-Italian computer expert working for HSBC in Geneva, contain details of more than 100,000 customers from around the world.
Apart from Briatore, the Italian clients on the list include motorcyclist Valentino Rossi and fashion designer Valentino Garavani.
