Spain has collected €260 million (SFr355 million) in taxes owed from assets kept by Spanish citizens in secret Swiss bank accounts.
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Customers from a Swiss branch of the bank HSBC came forward to declare money in the accounts after client data from the bank was stolen and the details passed onto investigators.
The stolen data contained the names of 659 Spanish citizens who maintained a total of 3,000 Swiss accounts.
Around 300 of the people involved put their accounts in order with the Spanish tax authorities by a June deadline, the budgetary secretary of state, Carlos Ocana, told the Spanish parliament’s economic commission.
The remainder have been given a warning by the government. Around 100 people have not responded to notices from the government.
Data from the Geneva branch of HSBC was stolen by a former IT employee three years ago and sold to France. France has offered the HSBC data to several other European countries.
HSBC admitted in March that the theft affected around 15,000 Swiss client accounts.
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Previously the private bank had said information on no more than ten accounts had been stolen by a former IT employee, who passed the data onto the French authorities, setting off a row between Paris and Bern. “It is now clear that the theft, which was carried out by an employee of the [bank’s] IT…
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