Egypt 20th country with most Swiss HSBC bank accounts: leaked report

Egypt is the 20th country with the most private dollar accounts at the Swiss subsidiary of the HSBC, with up to approximately $3.5 billion in Egyptian client accounts from 1988 to 2007, leaked documents from the bank have shown.

The bank helped clients from over 200 countries to hide millions of dollars from tax authorities, among other illegal behaviours, during this same period.

Some 700 Egyptian clients maintaied 1,478 accounts at the Swiss arm of the bank, according to documents leaked by a former HSBC employee in 2008. The documents were passed on to French newspaper Le Monde and other media outlets, including the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), in early 2014. The story started making international headlines on Sunday.

HSBC have told ICIJ that they "acknowledge that the compliance culture and standards of due diligence in HSBC’s Swiss private bank, as well as the industry in general, were significantly lower than they are today.”

It is not yet clear whether the Egyptian owners of these private dollar accounts could be guilty of tax evasion, or other forms of illicit financial flows.