Hervé Daniel Marcel Falciani (; born 9 January 1972) is a French-Italian

systems engineer Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinkin ...

and

whistleblower Whistleblowing (also whistle-blowing or whistle blowing) is the activity of a person, often an employee, revealing information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe, unethical or ...

who is credited with "the biggest banking leak in history." In 2008, Falciani began collaborating with numerous European nations by providing allegedly illegal stolen information relating to more than 130,000 suspected tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts specifically those with accounts in HSBC's Swiss subsidiary HSBC Private Bank. Falciani created the " Lagarde list", a list of HSBC clients who allegedly used the bank to evade taxes and launder money. Falciani leaked the list to ex-French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde (currently the

President of the European Central Bank The president of the European Central Bank is the head of the European Central Bank (ECB), the main institution responsible for the management of the euro and monetary policy in the Eurozone of the European Union (EU) The current president of ...

). Lagarde, in turn, sent the list to governments whose citizens were on the list. On 11 December 2014, Falciani was indicted in absentia by the Swiss federal government for violating the country's bank secrecy laws and for

industrial espionage Industrial espionage, also known as economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage, is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While political espionage is conducted or orchestrat ...

. The indictment accused Falciani of stealing information from HSBC's Geneva offices and passing it on to tax authorities in France. HSBC had been indicted in France for

money laundering Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities (often known as dirty money) such as drug trafficking, sex work, terrorism, corruption, and embezzlement, and converting the funds i ...

in November 2014. In November 2015, Switzerland’s federal court sentenced Falciani to five years in prisonthe "longest sentence ever demanded by the confederation's public ministry in a case of banking data theft". Falciani was accused of "aggravated financial espionage, data theft and violation of commercial and banking secrecy".

Biography

After studying at the

Sophia Antipolis Sophia Antipolis is a 2,400 hectare technology park in southeast France, and as of 2021 home to 2,500 companies, valued today at more than 5.6 billion euros and employing more than 38,000 people counting more than 80 nationalities. The park is ...

technology park, Falciani became a computer engineer at the Swiss branch of

HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...

, where he worked between 2001 and 2008. In 2006, he reorganized the database of the organization to improve its security. Falciani has declared that he realized that the way data was managed at HSBC fostered

tax evasion Tax evasion or tax fraud is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to red ...

, and proposed a new system, which was rejected by his superiors. After the HSBC reaction, and because he believed that "it is a systematic violation of fundamental rights of citizens by subtracting funds that should be allocated to the general interest", for two years Falciani collected evidence of potential tax fraud involving 130,000 individuals. Falciani tried to make the information available to the Swiss judicial authorities, but was unsuccessful. This claim was corroborated by French prosecutors. In 2008, Falciani made a trip to

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

and, using a false identity, attempted to sell what he claimed was private client information from a Swiss bank to Bank Audi. Falciani claims that he did this in order to intentionally activate an internal alarm system available to Swiss banking employers, the Swiss Bankers Association ( Swissbanking), and which is monitored by the police. He hoped this would allow Swiss prosecutors to become aware of HSBC's criminal activities. In their prosecution against him, however, Swiss authorities claimed that he went to Beirut with the intention of selling the data for profit. In either case, an alarm was indeed set off after a woman reported that a man calling himself Ruben al-Chidiak had attempted to sell her the private data. Falciani says he paid for the airline tickets from his own HSBC account so that authorities could track him. On 22 December 2008, Falciani was arrested, questioned and released. On release, Falciani travelled to France where he was arrested in January 2009, forcing the Swiss judiciary to issue an international

arrest warrant An arrest warrant is a warrant issued by a judge or magistrate on behalf of the state which authorizes the arrest and detention of an individual or the search and seizure of an individual's property. Canada Arrest warrants are issued by a jud ...

for him. Switzerland called on France to search his home and to seize the laptop used to send the files. After searching the address, the prosecutor of Nice, Eric de Montgolfier, opened his own investigation, not against Falciani, but against alleged tax fraudsters appearing in the list. The so-called Falciani list remains in France. An international collaboration began with various judicial authorities and remains ongoing. The Falciani list created a diplomatic incident between Switzerland and France. The latter finally agreed to return the data, but only after the contents had been examined. Afterwards Falciani fled to Spain on the advice of the U.S. government because "it would be easy for someone to pay" to try to kill him. Upon arrival, he was arrested in Barcelona in July 2012, due to the Swiss international warrant. He was jailed at Valdemoro prison (Madrid), waiting for the

Audiencia Nacional The Audiencia Nacional (; ) is a high court in Spain with jurisdiction over all of the Spanish territory. It is specialised in certain kinds of crime, having original jurisdiction over major crimes such as those committed against the Crown and i ...

to decide on his extradition to Switzerland. On 18 December 2012, the Audiencia Nacional released him provisionally. It was in maximum security conditions: eight bodyguards and bulletproof vest. After that Falciani hid in Spain under a system of maximum security protection sponsored by the UN. Finally, on 8 May 2013, Falciani was released. The

, given the ongoing collaboration between Spanish and French courts, decided not to extradite Falciani, the reason being that he had provided information indicative of "severely irregular" suspicious activity, and of illegal and criminal offenses. He was released because in Spain there is no legal concept of

bank secrecy Banking secrecy, alternatively known as financial privacy, banking discretion, or bank safety,Guex (2000), p. 240 is a Non-disclosure agreement, conditional agreement between a bank and its clients that all foregoing activities remain secure, Con ...

, and information technology trade secrets can not be used to hide unlawful activities. In April 2014, Falciani was called to assist the Argentine federal taxation agency (AFIP) in the fight against money laundering. Falciani published a book about his experience in the HSBC scandal called ''Séisme sur la planète finance'' (''Earthquake on Planet Finance'' in English) that was published in April 2015. He lived in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

for a time, but continued working with Spanish authorities, and stood as a candidate in Spanish elections for the anti-corruption X Party. In April 2018 he was again arrested in Madrid and again released in September after a Spanish high court rejected the extradition request on the grounds that the Spanish legal code does not recognize ‘aggravated financial espionage’.

Political activity

Hervé Falciani was first in the electoral list of the new Spanish political party Citizen Network X Party for the European elections of 2014. He was elected by citizens in Internet through open lists. Finally the X Party did not obtain any seats. In February 2015, it was announced that Falciani will collaborate with the Spanish party Podemos to draft measures against tax evasion for the party's political program.

Controversy

Falciani claims he was kidnapped by

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

Mossad The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (), popularly known as Mossad ( , ), is the national intelligence agency of the Israel, State of Israel. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with M ...

agents in Geneva, who were seeking information on bank clients with

Hezbollah Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...

ties. Falciani claims that his motives are to repel Switzerland’s "attack" on other countries' tax laws and exchequers.M.V.,
The fall-out from Falciani
', Schumpeter Business and management blog, The Economist, 16 October 2013 HSBC's position is that Falciani is not a whistleblower, that he has instead tried to sell, not release, the stolen data, and only started to cooperate with authorities after being imprisoned in Spain. Regarding this allegation the

, a high court in Spain, stated that "this fact" (the court's quotation marks in reference to the allegation):

appears somewhat confused and inconsistent with the factual story that we present, which do seem objectively specific episodes of provision of information and effective collaboration with authorities of other states, which indicates a determined attitude of Falciani and not an economic motivation.

Indictment

Falciani was indicted by Switzerland on 11 December 2014, for violating the country's bank secrecy laws and for

. Falciani (who was not named in the indictment, as is customary for Switzerland) was charged with stealing information from HSBC's Geneva offices and passing it on to French tax authorities. The Swiss prosecutors said they were willing to try Falciani in absentia for his alleged crimes. In the month prior to his indictment, France had indicted HSBC for

. Falciani had also offered his services to the government of India, which had been investigating money laundering abetted by HSBC. The Swiss government had refused to help the Indian government in its investigation of Indian citizens who were abetted in tax evasion by HSBC on the basis that the information detailing HSBC's alleged transgression was stolen. In an interview with the Indian television network NDTV, Falciani said that Switzerland indicted him as part of an "agenda" to stifle whistleblowers like himself who have exposed corruption in the Swiss banking industry.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Falciani, Herve 1972 births Living people People from Monte Carlo French people of Italian descent French expatriates in Spain French expatriates in Monaco French whistleblowers Italian whistleblowers Italian expatriates in Spain Italian expatriates in Monaco