Se maintaining Swiss bank accounts
listed in their names in HSBC documents: Mr and Mrs Balasuriya together are shown as holding a balance of US$ 10,668,094, daughter Lakshmi Fernando U $ 1,989,370, son Rohan US$ 1,975,594, three sons Mahendra, Lakshman and Asoka each held US$ 1,975,319. Referring to Lakshman, the HSBC document adds: "The family own hotels, a gem stone business and are now going into properties. They are very well connected in Sri Lanka. They operate from many towns in Sri Lanka and asked why bankers only seem to visit Colombo. He mentioned that many of the affluent family in gem stone business live in towns well to the south of Colombo and Kandy has many affluent families. He indicated that he was no longer visited by the UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) which would indicate that the lady who left Barclays after us was no longer covering the region."
Connected to two accounts is the name Subramaniam Surendran. He is described in trade circles in Colombo as a businessman who had dealings with the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB). Two different accounts were listed. The balance in one was US$ 6,564,952 and the other US$ 69,665. His wife, Charlotte Ranjitha, described as a 'housewife' in documents, is listed as holding in another account a sum of US$ 6,495,287. Surendran's profession is described in documents as an "agent" and had on occasions dealt with the Bank through an authorised intermediary. He has also assigned his wife as the beneficiary.
Under Anura Leslie Perera from Bandarawela, believed to be a lawyer representing an account holder, is listed a balance of US$ 1,692,959. Documents reveal that he operated from an address in Nicosia and was in touch with the HSBC on the telephone. Vaswani Aruna Rajendra, though with a Sri Lankan address, operated from Perth, Western Australia. He held a balance of US$ 1,384,149. Three members of the Hirdaramani family, known in Sri Lanka for their textile business, are listed as holding balances as follows: Nikhil Kishore US$ 817,446, Vinod Kishore US$ 646,243. He held this together with Leena Vinod. Another account held by Leena Vinod also had the same balance of US$ 646,243. The names mentioned and those of others appear in the table given here. Also given in a table are those who have closed their account together with the period they were operated.
Among closed accounts is one in the name of Lalith Bhupendra Kotelawala who holds Sri Lanka's highest honour - the title of Deshamanya (Pride of the Nation)." He is the Chairman of Ceylinco Consolidated. The Golden Key Credit Card Company, a member of his group, crashed leaving thousands of depositors in
OPENING & December 21,1988
21-Dec-88 January 07,1991 December 22,1980
January 28,1981
CLOSING DATES March 3,1997 March 3,1997 2 March, 2006 (Balance at closure 100,705) November 05,2004 October 23,2000 January 13,1981 May 10,2004
July 16, 1980 September 02,2003 December 13,1988 October 01,2001 April 28,1981 June 17,2004 April 3,1984 March 31,2003 October1 10,1989 June13,2001 October 09,2001 July 14,2005 December 13,1988 October 01,2001
April 28,1981 June 17,2004 October 14,1991 December 26,2000 October 09,2002 October 19,2004 October 09,2002 October 19,2004 despair. He opened the HSBC account on December 21, 1988 and closed it over eight years later, on March 3, 1997. He was awarded the Deshamanya title in 1994 when his secret account was still in operation. The Sunday Times found that he had not declared this offshore account either to the Department of Exchange Control or the Department of Inland Revenue. Similarly, Daya Ranjit Senanayake, his onetime deputy had also opened an account and later closed it on the same dates but made no disclosure.
When the revelations from the ICIJ came, the HSBC first requested them to destroy all the data. However, after being informed of the full extent of the reporting team's findings, they gave a final response that was more conciliatory, telling ICIJ "We acknowledge that the compliance culture and standards of due diligence in HSBC's Swiss private bank, as well as the industry in general, were significantly lower than they are today." The written statement said the bank had "taken significant steps over the past several years to implement reforms and exit clients who did not meet strict new HSBC standards, including those where we had concerns in relation to tax compliance." The bank added that it had re-focused this part of its business. "As a result of this repositioning, HSBC's Swiss private bank has reduced its client base by almost 70 per cent since 1997," HSBC said.
The response to the Swiss leaks investigation was swift and global. HSBC officials were summoned to appear several times before the public accounts committee in the UK; countries including Brazil, Argentina, Belgium and France started or deepened official inquiries into the matter; and many other countries requested the so-called Falciani files from the French Government and have started to recover tax money lost to their national treasuries. The data were originally smuggled away by a HSBC employee turned whistleblower Herve Feliciani and handed over to the French authorities in 2008. Le Monde obtained material from the French tax authorities. The ICIJ put a team of journalists from multiple countries to sift through the data and unravel startling details. Among facts that came to light was how former and current politicians from Britain, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Kenya, Romania, India, the Philippines and Algeria held offshore accounts.
"Banks play an essential role in keeping criminals and kleptocrats of the financial system," Marina Walker Guevara, Deputy Director of the ICIJ told the Sunday Times. She said, "HSBC Geneva failed to live to those high standards in the past and as a result a whole range of bad actors were able to hold accounts alongside people who had done nothing wrong."
In 2013 the ICIJ exposed secret accounts of those holding them in the Singapore based Portcullis TrustNet including a group of Sri Lankans.