IT specialist who exposed wrongdoing at HSBC’s Swiss private bank is arrested in Spain, where he has lived since 2013

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Hervé Falciani, the whistleblower who exposed wrongdoing at HSBC’s Swiss private bank, is facing extradition from Spain to Switzerland after he was arrested in Madrid this week.

HSBC whistleblower given five years’ jail over biggest leak in banking history Read more

Falciani, an IT specialist, fled from Switzerland to France in 2008 with a list of 130,000 names of organisations and individuals who were using the Swiss banking system to launder money and evade taxes. The leak was dubbed the biggest in banking history.

The Swiss first issued an international warrant for Falciani’s arrest in 2009. The French, however, instead of extraditing him and returning the stolen data, used his list to prosecute tax evaders.

Falciani later fled to Spain and, in 2013, Spain’s national court rejected a Swiss extradition request on the grounds that the charge of violating bank secrecy was not an offence in Spain if the secrecy was used as a cover for serious offences.

The Swiss justice ministry said it had submitted a formal request for Falciani’s extradition on Thursday. The Spanish national court judge Diego de Egea freed Falciani while he considers the case for extradition. He has had his passport retained, must report to the police once a week and is not allowed to leave Spain.



Falciani’s case is now before the same Spanish court that acquitted him on the same charges nearly five years ago. It remains to be seen what new argument will be presented that might reverse the earlier decision.

Since 2013, Falciani has lived mostly in Spain under a high-security programme sponsored by the United Nations. In November 2015, a Swiss court sentenced Falciani in absentia to five years imprisonment for financial espionage and data theft. They now want to extradite him to serve his sentence.

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For its part, Spain is keen to extradite two Catalan fugitives from Switzerland. Marta Rovira, the secretary general of the Republican Left party, and Anna Gabriel, a prominent member of the radical Popular Unity Candidacy, are currently taking refuge in Geneva.

Until now, Swiss authorities have been reluctant to comply. The arrest of Falciani is widely seen in Spain as a favour to the Swiss, in the hope that it will be returned in kind.

The arrest order for Falciani was issued on 19 March, four days before Rovira fled to Switzerland, but several weeks after Gabriel sought refuge there.

Falciani was arrested on Wednesday as he was about to give a talk at a Madrid university entitled: When telling the truth is heroic.

To many people Falciani is a hero, a Robin Hood figure who didn’t seek to benefit from the information he had, which he freely shared with the authorities in France, Spain and other countries.

Ada Colau, Barcelona’s mayor, described Falciani’s arrest and possible extradition as a scandal.

“He is a key figure in the fight against corruption who worked with the Spanish authorities to prosecute tax fraud,” she said. “He also advised Barcelona city council on how to improve transparency.”

Spanish tax authorities recovered some €300m (£262m) in unpaid tax from some of the 637 Spaniards who appeared on Falciani’s list.