Herve Falciani, the former HSBC employee who leaked documents alleging the bank helped clients evade millions of dollars in taxes. (AFP)
A Swiss prosecutor called today for former HSBC employee Herve Falciani, who leaked documents alleging the bank helped clients evade millions of dollars in taxes, to be jailed for six years.
Carlo Bulletti urged a court in the southern Swiss town of Bellinzona to find Falciani guilty of industrial espionage, data theft and violating Switzerland's long-cherished banking secrecy laws, and lock him up for six years, the ATS news agency reported.
Bulletti insisted that Falciani, a 43-year-old French-Italian national who exposed the so-called Swissleaks scandal, was not a whistleblower as he has portrayed himself to be.
"All claims of being a white knight are simply a web of lies," the prosecutor said during his closing arguments in the absence of Falciani, who has refused to travel from his home in France to take part in the trial.
Falciani leaked a cache of documents allegedly indicating that HSBC's Swiss private banking arm helped more than 120,000 clients hide 180.6 billion euros ($205.4 billion) from tax authorities.
He is widely viewed as a whistleblower and his actions have been hailed in countries where the leaked information is helping net tax cheats, but Swiss authorities maintain Falciani was only interested in "cashing in".
Bulletti today listed different phases in Falciani's alleged criminal activities, starting with the acquisition of the documents in 2006.
Then in 2007, the former IT worker headed abroad to try to sell the information, first through a contact in Saudi Arabia, before approaching Lebanese banks.
Only after his plan to sell the data fell apart did Falciani contact European tax authorities and begin passing them the stolen information, the prosecutor said.
"We don't know if Herve Falciani was paid for transmitting this data to foreign state services, but that is not important" for determining his guilt, he said.
Bulletti insisted this was a clearly proven case of industrial espionage, pointing to the duration of Falciani's criminal activity and the value of the secrets he passed on, with his actions provoking a diplomatic crisis for Switzerland.
Falciani has denied he was only seeking financial gain, insisting he had wanted to expose how banks support tax evasion and money laundering.