Whistle-blowers in dire straits

It appears to be a bad time for global whistle-blowers with Switzerland sentencing former HSBC Bank information technology specialist Herve Falciani, in absentia, to five years’ imprisonment for espionage, data theft and violating commercial and banking secrecy. Falciani, a French national, is in France and refused to go to Geneva as he said he would not get justice from people he called “financial terrorists”. He had in 2008 released 100 GB of data that exposed HSBC’s Swiss Private Banking division, Geneva, for helping more than 1.2 lakh clients, including drug dealers, hide $192 billion from the tax authorities of their respective countries. The Indian government benefited as the French government passed on documents relating to more than 1,000 Indians who had stacked $4 billion in HSBC. HSBC had stated that he was a thief who stole documents of private individuals as his motive was greed and personal gain. Interestingly, HSBC got away with a fine of $39 million as penalty for “past organisational deficiencies” and escaped criminal charges.

Falciani maintains he did it to expose how banks help tax evasion and money laundering. The accusation of “greed” being Falciani’s motive may not be the case, but the Indian government had met Falciani and asked for more information for which they were offering to pay. But they did not hear from him after that. Falciani expects to approach the European Human Rights Court but, till then, it seems these are precarious times for whistle-blowers like him, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Bradley Manning, currently serving a prison term in the US.