Hervé Falciani

Hervé Falciani (born 1972) is a computer engineer of Italian-French descent. Since 2009, he has been collaborating with law enforcement agencies from various countries, providing them access to the information system of the private bank HSBC, an international giant headquartered in Geneva, where he had been employed since 2001. Wanted by the Swiss police, Falciani sought refuge in France and was arrested in Spain in 2012. The so-called Falciani List (containing 130,000 names) enabled the recovery of millions of euros in unpaid taxes, primarily from French and Spanish citizens. On December 11, 2014, Falciani was indicted by the Swiss judiciary as an economic spy for revealing banking secrets. A few days earlier, thanks to the information provided by Falciani, French and Swiss authorities had launched an investigation into HSBC for organized tax fraud, money laundering, organized illegal networks, and illegal financial intermediation, causing significant diplomatic embarrassment with Switzerland. The data of Italian clients reached Italy in 2010. Additionally, Argentina had recently accused HSBC of assisting 4,000 of its citizens in tax evasion. Finally, American, British, and Swiss authorities imposed massive fines on the bank for foreign exchange market manipulation. In 2014, Falciani ran as a candidate in the European elections with the Spanish party Partido X.