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Geneva. A Swiss unit of global banking giant HSBC has revealed that details of 24,000 bank customers may have been leaked in a major security breach that has helped fuel pressure on Switzerland over tax evasion.

Alexandre Zeller, chief executive of HSBC Private Bank (Switzerland), said 9,000 of them had left the bank since the data theft by an IT expert three years ago.

Switzerland’s financial and banking regulator announced that it had launched “formal administrative proceedings against HSBC” over the security breach, noting that the stolen data was “extensive.”

Shortly after the case first came to light in France in December, the bank said that to its knowledge the stolen data concerned fewer than 10 clients.

On Thursday, HSBC Private Bank apologized to its clients in a statement and said it was only just coming to understand the full extent of the leak. “It is now clear that the theft, which was carried out by an employee of the IT department about three years ago, could concern about 15,000 current clients whose accounts were opened in Switzerland before October 2006,” said Zeller.

The incident triggered a brief spat between Switzerland and France last year amid pressure on Swiss banking secrecy.

Acting on a Swiss warrant over the theft, French authorities recovered the data from former computer specialist Herve Falciani and then said they were probing suspected evasion by French taxpayers with secret Swiss accounts.

“It’s still unclear how Falciani managed to steal the information,” Zeller admitted. Falciani had worked for the bank for seven years. HSBC insisted client data in the bank’s branches outside Switzerland were not affected.



Agence France-Presse