I had, in 2001, my third job with HSBC, a private bank in Monte Carlo.
My job was to upgrade and improve the IT infrastructures.
When I moved to the headquarters it was perfectly clear that they were moving in a direction
where we had less and less controls and that they didn't want to change their ways.
Inside the bank all this money was coming from mafia, from narco-trafficking, from criminal
activities like blood diamonds and tax evasion, of course.
And all this was there without control.
In addition, once known, no one - and I'm talking about governments - were motivated
to do anything even when it was possible.
We had over 500 billion dollars in assets that were not supposed to be there.
And it was clearly established that the problem was from the direction, from the board of directors.
So they are not just receiving all this money but also participating to default to hide it.
And this is the most shocking thing. When we realised that internally it was not possible
to change enough the systems we had to create a plan to force legal authorities to act.
I had to get the DNA of the bank. I had access to 100,000 names from more than 170 countries.
We needed not only to get the sensitive data like the names but also the counterparts,
the transactions. We're talking about secrets.
One month later, in the end of January 2009, French police knocked on my door early morning
to arrest me a second time.
I make it clear to the prosecutor, the French prosecutor, mister Montgolfier, that he was
in contact with the biggest case of information available over shadow banking.
From the beginning I gave him access to a list of several thousands of French clients hiding
their money in Geneva.
Thanks to this information about the bank we can know that hundreds of billions of dollars
are now paid in tax. Without tax we don't have infrastructures, we don't have modern society.
It's not because something is possible that it is fair. Not paying tax means what?
Means not wanting to take your responsibility of being part of a society.
It is now impossible for governments to pretend not to be aware that this financial system
is supporting huge inequalities.
For me it's my life, it will continue to be a fight for me but I'm just part of this fight
for sharing information.