Fifteen years ago with his “black list” Hervè Falciani made all the wealthy account holders who had an account in the Swiss bank HSBC tremble. It contained almost ten thousand Italian names suspected of tax evasion. Switzerland has always hunted him. And he almost succeeded on the night of December 7, when the police knocked on the door of his room, in a hotel in the center of Milan where he was on holiday with his wife, to arrest him. There was an international arrest warrant for Falciani. But his detention lasted ten days. First he was released from prison, placed under house arrest with a ban on leaving the country by the Court of Appeal of Milan. And then, the next day, he was released. By order of the Ministry of Justice.
The intervention of the Ministry of Justice
It is an unusual case, judicial but also political, that concerns the IT engineer, a former employee of the Swiss bank HSBC who in 2008 stole the lists of VIPs and Scrooges who held millions of euros in Switzerland. His collaboration with the magistrates led to the opening of investigations in Italy (the first was in Turin), in France and in Spain: the Swiss Assange, with dual French and Italian nationality, during the period in which he worked for the bank had managed to take possession of the data of 127 thousand current accounts. He explained that he had acted “for moral reasons”.
But in Switzerland, in 2015, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison for economic espionage against the bank. And his Italian nationality is one of the reasons used by the ministry to restore his freedom. In fact, the note sent to the judges indicates the desire that no precautionary measures be carried out or maintained against Falciani, leveraging the fact that the High Court of Madrid had also refused to grant his extradition to Switzerland (from Spain) precisely for due to his role as a collaborator.
The investigations resulting from Falciani's revelations
The lawyers Riccardo Magarelli, Giorgio Bertolotti and William Bourdon who defend the unfaithful ex-employee hope that even the Italian judges will not agree to his surrender, and that “both his person and his information will be safeguarded, in recognition and protection of the paramount interest public at national and international level”. Following his revelations “billions of euros were recovered”.
The lawyers compare his case to that of Paul Watson, the activist who defends whales and one of the founders of Greenpeace: “Interpol must provide immediate protection against Watson, Falciani and other future whistleblowers.” They add that “a paradigm shift is necessary, with the passage of the protection of whistleblowers from a national to an international framework”.
«The criminalization of whistleblowers, whether for retaliation or for political reasons, is no longer acceptable» comment the defenders who launch an appeal to the European Union and the United Nations, «to fulfill their duty to raise a shield against the criminalization of those who denounce the impunity of large private actors whose crimes endanger the future of humanity and the common good of citizens.”
