



Police have searched the headquarters of Santander Bank in Madrid after suspicions were raised that the bank was linked to money laundering and tax evasion on the part of some of its clients.

Acting on orders of high court judge José de la Mata, agents of the central operative unit of the Guardia Civil began searching the bank’s offices in Boadilla del Monte in central Spain on Friday morning for information about specific accounts.

Santander issued a statement saying it had “received a request for information about the movements of certain accounts between different entities”. It added that it was collaborating with the authorities and “supplying all the available information”.

The case involves the continuing investigation into the Falciani list of accounts from HSBC’s Swiss private bank in Geneva, leaked by IT worker Hervé Falciani in 2008. The list included the names of some 130,000 suspected tax evaders, 659 of whom were Spanish. The Spanish tax office believes that as much as €6bn was concealed in these 659 accounts.

A large number of the 659 people named regularised their affairs with the taxman but several decided to fight in the courts on the grounds that Falciani had obtained the information illegally and it was therefore not admissible as evidence.

De la Mata has been investigating whether HSBC helped clients to conceal and launder money from illicit gains. Sources close to the case say that 40 “individuals or family groups” are under investigation. All 40 are said to have appeared on Falciani’s list.

A tax inspectors’ report says that “there are indications that HSBC, either through its offices in Switzerland or its branches in Spain or third countries, offered Spanish residents the possibility of placing substantial sums of money in opaque accounts”.

Emilio Botín, then chief executive of Santander, was the most prominent Spanish name on Falciani’s list, along with several members of his family. The Botín family has run the bank since 1909. Botín made a €200m settlement with the Spanish tax agency, which represented 10% of the sum involved, but tax evasion charges were dropped after he made the settlement. His daughter Ana Patricia became CEO when he died in 2014 – she previously ran Santander in the UK.