3 ms·
This is an interesting case because the bank claims he stole the records to sell them to rival banks, while he claims he stole them to be a whistle blower to fo
by chollida1 10y ago
This is an interesting case because the bank claims he stole the records to sell them to rival banks, while he claims he stole them to be a whistle blower to foreign governments.
Things in the banks favour of this story are:
1) he was convicted in a Swiss court
2) he didn't actually approach any foreign governments for the 2 years he worked at HSBC until the day after the Swiss government brought him in for questioning about the theft of the bank's data.
3) He was caught trying to sell the bank data in Beirut.
In his favour:
1) The French government has no plans to prosecute him and allegedly hasn't paid him for the information.
I guess this is a case of one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter?
- brown9-2 10y agoThe article disputes your second point: But in March, 2008, before fleeing Geneva, he had sent e-mails to British and German intelligence agencies, announcing, “I have the whole list of clients of one of the world’s top five private banks.” (The agencies did not pursue this opportunity.) He also contacted a French revenue inspector named Jean-Patrick Martini. During the summer of 2008, Falciani arranged a secret meeting with Martini in a French village across the Swiss border. Martini brought along a psychologist, who helped him come to the conclusion that Falciani seemed credible about the provenance of his data. (he fled Geneva in late 2008) The fact that the Swiss convicted him of industrial espionage when the main point of the article is how important bank secrecy (and it's protection of tax evasion) to the Swiss shouldn't really help anything.