Another Whistleblower, Stephanie Gibaud, Offers to Help Government With Black Money Probe

Mangalore Today News Network

Paris, Dec 06, 2014:  Stephanie Gibaud, a whistleblower and former public relations officer at the UBS France bank, has told NDTV she is willing to assist India with its investigation into black money. This comes a week after the government decided to enlist the help of Herve Falciani - whistleblower and an ex-HSBC employee - in its black money probe after his interview with NDTV.

Ms Gibaud was instrumental in UBS France being recently slapped with an initial fine of 1.1 billion euros in an ongoing investigation in which it was charged with helping wealthy French clients hide black money in tax havens around the world.

She told NDTV that big banks offering offshore services where clients could park their untaxed wealth were actively looking to expand business in India.

"For example, for UBS, the marketing hub is now in Mumbai," she said, adding she could "explain very clearly" to Indian investigators what strategy was used to approach clients, where and how they were approached and how "the bank penetrates all its networks everywhere on the planet and the focus is per country, per city, per network".

Speaking on her stint at the bank, Ms Gibaud said her job was to get wealthy clients "things money can’t buy", such as tickets for games that had been sold out for months or years or private concerts by renowned artists. But it was only in 2008, nine years after she joined the bank, that she realized she was organising exclusive events which were meant to facilitate meetings for Swiss client advisors who were hunting for French clients to help them hide their wealth.

She claims she got suspicious when her superiors starting pressuring her to delete all documents in her computer that had tens of thousands of names of clients and client advisors as well as all archived files. When she didn’t comply, she was harassed till she was forced to leave, Ms Gibaud alleged.

Apart from assisting investigations in France and Belgium into identifying tax defaulters, Ms Gibaud said she was also helping other countries which she couldn’t name for fear of alerting the bank.

In his interview to NDTV last month, Herve Falciani had said he had lots of information that could help New Delhi with the black money probe, adding he could help change investigation tactics in a major way. NDTV facilitated contact between Mr Falciani and Indian officials last week.

Mr Falciani had, in 2008, famously leaked data that revealed names of hundreds thousands of bank account holders at HSBC in Geneva, where he was employed as a systems engineer. Countries like the US, Spain, Belgium and Argentina are using him to identify tax defaulters and money launderers, the banks that enable them, and the trail of undeclared money across continents.

 

Courtesy: NDTV