Swiss authorities have raised the Geneva offices of a subsidiary of HSBC over allegations of money laundering.
Prosecutors say that they are investigating HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) for “suspected aggravated money laundering”, and the investigation could be extended to include individuals at the bank suspected of participating in the crime.
HSBC says that is is “co-operating with the Swiss authorities”.
The raid comes a week after allegations about wealthy individuals around the world using banking secrecy laws in Switzerland to evade paying taxes by moving their money to HSBC Private Bank accounts.
HMRC was given the leaked data that provided the evidence for the allegations back in 2010 and said that it has identified 1,100 British people that had not paid their taxes. However, in five years the authorities have only prosecuted one person from that list.
The failure of HMRC to prosecute those suspected of evading tax and paying their fair share has caused uproar, and resulted in accusations from both sides of the political aisle about “dodgy donors”.
Stephen Green, who was head of HSBC during the period of alleged criminality (2005 – 2007), was made a Conservative peer by the current coalition government.
HSBC has said that they are accountable for past failures and took out a full-page advert in a number of weekend newspapers to apologise over the allegations, but says that the business has now fundamentally changed.
HSBC faces criminal investigation in the US, Argentina, France, and Belgium, but not in the UK, despite being based in the country.
