16 Bangladeshis’ connections found with Swiss HSBC

At least 16 Bangladeshi clients had 31 accounts in a Swiss subsidiary of the HSBC (Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation) Holdings Plc, a multinational British bank.
These 31 accounts had deposits worth $13 million, presumably laundered from Bangladesh. The largest deposit linked to a Bangladeshi client amounted to $4.4 million.
The leaked HSBC list of Swiss bank account-holders from 203 countries revealed this information. According to the list, Bangladesh ranks 148th among the countries in terms of fund held.   
With total funds of $4.1 billion, India ranked 16th on the leaked list.
Pakistanis having $859.7 million ranked 48th, while Sri Lankan and Nepalese with $58.3 million and $54 million ranked 112nd and 116th respectively. Afghans had a paltry $3 million.  
The list, made public by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), comprises over one lakh HSBC customers and their bank accounts with total balances of over $100 billion. There were more than 19,000 clients not associated with any country, ICIJ said.
The data of these accounts had been unveiled by a former HSBC employee, Herve Falciani, to the French government in 2008 and its tax authority launched an investigation.
French newspaper Le Monde obtained a version of the tax authority data. Later it shared these data with ICIJ on agreement that the consortium would accumulate a global team of journalists to explore the data and produce this reporting project.
These data on bank clients and their associated private accounts at the Swiss branch of HSBC are mostly from 1988 to 2007.
ICIJ said that the Swiss branch of HSBC continued to offer services to clients 'who had been unfavorably named by the United Nations, in court documents and in the media as connected to arms trafficking, blood diamonds and bribery'.
HSBC, in a statement, admitted of failure by its Swiss subsidiary and said that its Swiss arm had not been fully integrated into HSBC after its purchase in 1999, allowing "significantly lower" standards of compliance and due diligence to persist.
Swiss banks are branded as 'safe vaults of illegal money' and Switzerland is known as safe haven for black money. There is no restriction on keeping illegally-earned and tax-evaded wealth in this country.
Over the years, with many other people, Bangladeshis are also perking money in different Swiss banks.  
According to the report 'Banks in Switzerland: 2013', prepared by the Swiss National Bank (SNB), deposits by Bangladeshi citizens with various Swiss banks rose by 62 percent to $414 million in 2013 from $245 million in 2012.   
The funds, described by SNB as liabilities of Swiss banks or amounts due to their clients, are the official figures disclosed by the Swiss authorities. These figures, however, do not include the money that Bangladeshis or others might have in Swiss banks in the names of entities from different countries.
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