Hervé Falciani: ‘HSBC Switzerland was a Tax Haven in Itself’

The whistleblower has been wanted by the Swiss for seven years. Thierry Esch/Getty

“There have been times,” Hervé Falciani tells me, “when I’ve wondered if I was losing touch with reality. Could I really have seen what I saw, and revealed the things that I did, while the financial world continued as if nothing had happened?”

Falciani, sometimes called “the Ed Snowden of banking,” is the whistleblower who, in 2008, committed the most momentous theft of data in banking history. The ex- systems engineer at the Swiss subsidiary of HSBC downloaded details of more than 100,000 potential tax evaders and made the information available to the account holders’ national tax agencies. Viewed by some as a felon, by others as a martyr for justice, he has been wanted by the Swiss for seven years. Falciani, 43, can still call on two bodyguards, supplied by the French government. Today, in this secluded Paris café, he arrives alone.

HSBC has acknowledged that its Swiss arm was guilty of advising customers on evading tax.