Paul Flynn – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Flynn on 2015-02-11.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, which HM Revenue and Customs officials saw the list of bank accounts held at the HSBC private bank in Geneva, known as the Falciani list, as passed to the Government by the French financial authorities; what evaluation was conducted of that list on its receipt; and when Ministers in his Department were first made aware of the information on that list.

Mr David Gauke

On receipt of the list HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) set up a project, called ‘Operation SOLACE’, which at its peak had around 300 tax specialists systematically examining the leaked HSBC Suisse data, to assess how it could be used to identify tax evasion and whether it provided sufficient evidence to support enforcement action against UK resident account holders.

The HSBC Suisse data initially revealed 6,800 ‘entities’ – individuals, businesses and trusts – but this contained duplication (some people had multiple accounts). Removing duplication left around 3,600 entities, all of which HMRC have examined.

HMRC have investigated and challenged more than 1,000 account holders, and collected £135 million from them in unpaid tax, interest and fines.

HMRC received the data from the French in April 2010 under very strict international treaty conditions, which limited its use to tax purposes only and prevented HMRC from sharing the data with other law enforcement authorities for investigating other potential offences.

Since 2010 we have asked the French authorities on a number of occasions for permission to use the data for purposes wider than tax collection.

The French authorities gave written confirmation on 23 February 2015 that they were lifting restrictions on the use and sharing of the data with other law enforcement agencies and regulators for the purpose of investigating criminal offences.

As a result, HMRC has recently held a multi-agency meeting to discuss how the stolen HSBC Suisse data can be shared with them.

Ministers were not made aware of any specific cases under the long standing principle of taxpayer confidentiality and HMRC operational independence.