Portugal's Attorney General's Office announced today that the Public Ministry is getting its act together relating to the list of Portuguese clients of HSBC in Switzerland who allegedly have been hiding their wealth from the tax authorities.
A total so far of 611 HSBC account holders with links to Portugal have been concealing their money in Switzerland. Accounts at HSBC with a total of €856 million have been traced to Portugal and there will be more to come.
The hunt is on following the release of the list which includes one account linked to Portugal containing €223 million, but the majority of clients with Portuguese connections had around €8 million tucked away.
Last Sunday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the confidential documents from the Swiss branch of the British bank HSBC, revealing around 100,000 suspected tax evaders worldwide, 19,000 of whom have yet to have their residency confirmed.
Portugal’s delighted tax authority managers have been poring over the details and now are looking at more than 100 Portuguese individuals and companies with undeclared accounts in the Swiss-based bank
Embarrassingly for HSBC in Switzerland, internal documents now circulating show how account managers advised and offered solutions to customers on how to evade taxes due in their countries.
HSBC may have done nothing wrong, technically, but will be under pressure and censure as the names of drug dealers, arms suppliers and tax-averse business people continue to come to the surface.
In the correspondence that currently is amusing the world of social media, the financial services industry yet again is shown to profit from the business of helping people to hide money and evade taxation.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese public can only marvel at the fortune held by the, until now unknown, Portuguese-Angolan ‘housewife’ Elsa Maria Matos Almeida Teixeira, with €17.6 million, and a Portuguese national living in Brazil, Maria José de Freitas Jakurski, with €101 million on deposit.
Sílvia Ruivo Caçador, from Vila Real has an astounding €223 milllion in Switzerland, Joaquim António Amaro da Cruz, from Castelo Branco, has deposits totalling €197 million, and Rosa Maria Pinho Amaro da Cruz Silva, from Santos-o-Velho, has managed to tuck away €165 million.
Other names are well known such as the cork magnate and investor Américo Amorim with a mere €5.2 million although before the list was published he denied that he would apppear on it, as did Espírito Santo Activos Financeiros - both appeared.
These names are the tip of the iceberg and the tax authority is working overtime to identify, tax or prosecute those who have felt above the law for so long.
