Transcripts show tax chief told committee that Revenue had disc with names of potential tax dodgers, contrary to ministerial denials of knowledge

HSBC files show how Swiss bank helped clients dodge taxes and hide millions Read more

Britain’s chief tax inspector told MPs in September 2011 that his department possessed a disc containing records from the Swiss subsidiary of a major UK bank – understood to be HSBC, contradicting Downing Street’s assertion on Tuesday that ministers only became aware of the scale of potential tax evasion through the bank at the weekend.



At the time, the former chairman of the HSBC, Stephen Green, was trade minister, having been appointed by David Cameron nine months earlier.

Hansard transcripts show that David Hartnett, the then head of HMRC, told a Treasury select committee investigation into tax avoidance: “I think the whole nation probably knows that our department has a disc from the Swiss – from the Geneva branch of a major UK bank – with 6,000 names, all ripe for investigation.”

Speaking to the Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop, Hartnett continued: “We have hundreds [of people] under investigation, some of them under criminal investigation, and we are about to challenge another 800. Then we will industrialise the process, challenging 1,000 at a time, with a view to having all those who need challenging challenged pretty quickly.”

Although Hartnett made no reference to HSBC by name, the bank and the leak were clearly identified in newspaper reports at the time.

Hartnett told MPs that HMRC had received the disc in June 2010 – nearly five months before Green was made a Tory peer and asked to become trade minister.

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The statements from Hartnett contrast with information provided at Tuesday morning’s Downing Street briefing. A spokeswoman for Cameron said ministers did not know about alleged tax evasion at HSBC’s Swiss arm until details emerged at the weekend when leaked files were published by the Guardian and other media organisations.



“No government minister had any knowledge that HSBC was involved in wrongdoing in regard to its Swiss banking arm,” the spokeswoman said.

In the afternoon, a spokeswoman sought to clarify the government position, saying: “We have no record of any government minister being made aware by HMRC of any alleged wrongdoing by HSBC employees.”

Her remarks were a more narrow denial of what Treasury ministers knew about the scale of tax evasion at the bank.

The spokeswoman refused to speculate on whether HMRC should have contacted the City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, over any alleged systemic wrongdoing at the bank, saying the focus of the HMRC was to recover lost tax.

It was also in the public domain in 2011 that HSBC had fought to block the French tax authorities from handing over the material on the disc to their British counterparts. The Financial Times reported in 2010 that legal efforts were made to block the transfer and protect the client’s confidentiality.