The Wall Street Journal has detailed the accounts behind the HSBC client data breach that I had mentioned back in March.
Four months ago, it was reported that a large number of high net-worth client details were stolen from HSBC’s Private Bank in Switzerland by a former employee who tried to sell the information to a Lebanese bank. The WSJ has all the details now including the banks in Lebanon that were approached as well as a Lebanese accomplice:
HSBC officials allege that Mr. [Hervé] Falciani copied thousands of files of wealthy clients of its Swiss private-banking arm. Swiss authorities are investigating whether Mr. Falciani, 38 years old, stole bank records and violated banking secrecy laws.
[…]
Mr. Falciani says he alerted his bosses at HSBC in 2006 about flaws in data storage that could affect client confidentiality, but no one listened. HSBC officials said they found no such warnings by Mr. Falciani.
Around that time, Ms. [Georgina] Mikhael, an HSBC colleague, entered the picture. A Franco-Lebanese computer programmer, she joined HSBC in Geneva on a temporary contract in 2006, but had no access to sensitive data, the company says. Soon after arriving at the bank, Ms. Mikhael and the married Mr. Falciani began a romantic relationship, which has since ended, according to their respective lawyers.
[…]
In February 2008, Mr. Falciani and Ms. Mikhael flew to Lebanon, where according to their lawyers they met Beirut representatives of five banks: BNP Paribas, Société Générale de Banque au Liban, Blom Bank, Audi Bank and Byblos Bank.
According to officials at the banks familiar with the meetings, Mr. Falciani, who was still employed by HSBC, introduced himself as Ruben Al-Chidiack and made a short marketing pitch. He evaded questions about how he obtained the data he offered to sell, these people said.
[…]
One of the Beirut bank branches that Mr. Falciani and Ms. Mikhael visited posted an alert of suspicious activities on a website managed by the Swiss Bankers Association. The notice said someone had been trying to sell “data on clients of various Swiss banks.”Swiss Federal Police, who monitor the site, opened a probe and soon homed in on Ms. Mikhael, who had traveled to Lebanon using her real identity.
All you need is a few action scenes, and you’ve got yourself a pretty good movie. You can read the plot in its entirety here.
Hervé Falciani, a former employee of HSBC, is at the center of a dispute between France and Switzerland over bank data. AFP/Getty Images