Data taken from the HSBC Private Bank in Switzerland by an employee and held by French investigators appears to be incomplete or inaccurate, the bank's Swiss chief had told a Sunday newspaper. "After checks, we can say that this list contains inaccuracies and is incoherent," Alexandre Zeller, chief executive of HSBC Private Bank in Geneva, told the Swiss newspaper Le Matin Dimanche.
He had only seen seven names from the data, which French officials suspect contains evidence of tax evasion or money laundering. But he added: "The data from (former staffer) Falciani that I have seen is incomplete or contains errors."
The data, taken from the subsidiary of the global banking giant in Geneva, is at the centre of a row between France and Switzerland over suspicions of tax evasion by French citizens using Swiss bank accounts.
HSBC says the information was stolen by Herve Falciani, a French citizen, and the Swiss authorities have called on France to hand it back after it was seized by police in southern France under a Swiss warrant. Zeller said banks never kept all their data together. Falciani appeared to have taken "several pieces of the puzzle and tried to put them together," he added.
"The data remains nonethless difficult to exploit both from a technical and legal point of view" French prosecutor Eric de Montgolfier has confirmed that he is investigating a claim by the former HSBC employee that the data might contain evidence of possible money laundering.
But Zeller said: "I have no fears of money laundering in our bank. Whatever the country, we're very strict on that. "If there were the slightest suspicion, we would have denounced it," the local HSBC chief added.
Newspaper reports in France suggested Falciani and another former staffer had tried to sell the data before in Lebanon.