Journalist says Brazil authorities negligent over HSBC deposits in Switzerland

Journalist from the Brazilian news portal UOL Fernando Rodrigues said Thursday (Mar 26) that the Council for the Control of Financial Activities (Coaf), and the Federal Revenue Service were negligent in  in the case regarding the accounts held by Brazilian nationals with HSBC Bank in Switzerland. Rodrigues, a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, was given access to the list of account-holders copied by an employee from the bank. In his testimony to the Senate's investigative committee on the matter, he said that, in September last year, the group of journalists working on the probes shared with Coaf a list with 342 names—3% of the total—which, he claims, were the first to be set for verification.

“Coaf didn't do anything. Evidently, the idea was to have both a journalistic investigation and the Brazilian government's interest working together in the incident. Of course, neither Coaf nor the government was required to break secrecy rules, because that would be a crime.” Rodrigues added that “it would be important if Coaf could at least say, with the support of other law enforcement agencies in Brazil, […] whether, on that list, among those 3%, there were anyone who did not declare their income […] to the Central Bank. Without saying who it was, they could say, listen, of the 300 names or so, we've got some 10% who have fulfilled their taxpaying obligations.”

He stated that the Revenue Service “didn't do anything, but leaked data indiscriminately,” therefore committing a crime by releasing some of the names without having probed into the more than 300 others and without ascertaining whether or not they declared the existence of HSBC accounts in Switzerland in 2007 and 2008.

Fernando Rodrigues urged senators to be cautious when revealing the names of the Brazilian nationals. “They might be people involved in tax evasion, but also people who hold legal accounts overseas. They might either, and this question can only be answered after each one of them is brought under scrutiny and has their data checked against the registers at the Federal Revenue Service and the Central Bank,” the journalist argued.

Another journalist, Chico Otávio, from the newspaper O Globo, who also took part in the public hearing held by the congressional committee, noted that, among all the people implicated thus far, who total nearly 140, only four have gone as far as to produce documents. “Some said they declared their accounts, some said their accounts had no irregularity, others simply claimed they're not aware of the existence of these accounts, even though we found deposits dating from 2006 and 2007.”

Randolfe Rodrigues, the committee's vice-president, criticized the negligence of the authorities regarding the investments made by Brazilian citizens abroad and the delay in looking into the transactions. In his view, Brazil has chosen to follow a different path from that adopted by France, which since 2008 has strengthened probes of this sort and was able to retrieve much of the money.

According to a news report published today (26) on O Globo, among the people on the list of 8,667 Brazilians who, in 2006 and 2007 had secret accounts with HSBC in Switzerland are politicians from five political parties.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira