Le Monde (France) has been investigating HSBC’s problem for a long time, but until early 2014, they only took possession of the bank’s data for the period 2005-2007.

These documents were stolen by former HSBC Private Bank employee – Hervé Falciani (France).

This document provides information from November 9, 2006 to December 31, 2007.

HSBC was accused of helping customers hide more than $100 billion in assets.

At the end of 2008, Falciani handed over the above documents to tax authorities in France.

HSBC PB is said to have hidden 5.7 billion euros for French customers alone.

On January 28, 2014, Le Monde published the first series of articles about investigation activities in France with the title: `Tax evasion: A sensitive investigation into HSBC’s list`.

A few days after the above articles were published, an anonymous person came to the Le Monde editorial office in Paris and gave them a memory card containing the entire file that French tax officials had extracted from the list Falciani took.

This list contains many arms smugglers, drug traffickers, terrorist financiers, politicians, celebrities, athletes, and industrial tycoons.

Documents show that HSBC illegally contacted many customers.

Considering the importance of the issue, in early 2014, Le Monde decided to share this document with the international press to ensure this would be investigated comprehensively and accurately.

This organization then secretly mobilized 154 reporters at 47 media agencies from many countries, such as Britain’s Guardian, Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung or America’s CBS.

During that meeting, reporters created three tools for investigation.

After that, everyone got down to work.

Reporters also have to consider the time and place to announce investigation results.

These discoveries shocked the world.

Research by ICIJ and foreign media organizations has delved deeper into HSBC’s dark corners than the US investigation in 2012. At that time, the US Senate concluded that this bank had lax tax control policies, causing

The US Senate Investigation Committee also said that some HSBC branches violated the Government’s ban by still conducting transactions for Iran and many other countries.