HSBC bank scandal: 5 in Dominican family on filtered list
Santo Domingo.- Five members of a single family figure on the list published on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) website with the names of customers who allegedly own accounts in Swiss bank HSBC.
José A. Rodríguez Yangüela, Laura Rodríguez Yangüela, Luis Rodriguez Yangüela, Tomás Rodríguez Yangüela and Catalina Yangüela de Rodriguez appear on the list released Tuesday.
However, when interviewed by network SIN, José A. Rodríguez said he doesn’t know why he figures on the list. “Neither I nor my brothers have accounts with the HSBC bank, I don’t know the reason why we appear there, maybe it was that we made some transfer or payment, but everything I say is pure speculation because I really don’t understand any of this,”
In addition to the Yangüela family, also figure the bank Banco Desarrollo del Este, Banque Cantonale Vaudoise, Eduardo Martin Duarte, Gonzalo Corral, Joel Jelderks, Jose Maria Lopez Coira, Massimiliano Ferretti, Tun Mouchen, Patricia Salzar and Ola Johannes Lind, who figures on the list three times.
The ICIJ said it has begun to uncover the “offshore” banking system’s secrecy, by partially opening the records of those companies in 10 jurisdictions.
The ICIJ said however that it doesn’t intended to suggest or imply that people and companies included in its database have violated the law or acted inappropriately.
It said the main objective in releasing the information is so that the owners of the companies become transparent, so it removed any data that doesn’t serve that purpose.
Dominican Republic ranks 127 among 203 countries listed under the whistleblower Hervé Falciani’s list, measure according to the amount of money deposited in banks.
