by Jamie Condliffe
A slew of 30,000 leaked Swiss HSBC bank account details—what the Guardian calls the “biggest banking leak in history”—lays bare the practices of the organization and its customers. And it doesn’t look pretty.
The leaked files, which you can explore online , reveal the use of Swiss bank accounts by actors, footballers,politicians, business owners and more to avoid paying tax to the relevant authorities. The Guardian, which has helped leak the documents along with Le Monde, BBC Panorama and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, writes that the “Swiss operation actively abetted clients in keeping accounts secret from tax authorities, at its height hiding $120bn in assets.”