HSBC’s Swiss division has reportedly written a mea culpa to Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, for erroneously putting his name on a list of Swiss account holders.

HSBC’s Swiss division has reportedly written a mea culpa to Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, for erroneously putting his name on a list of Swiss account holders, prompting an investigation into his affairs by the Indian tax authorities.

In a letter written by the bank to the Reliance Industries chairman, HSBC clarified that neither he nor his company had a beneficiary account with HSBC’s Swiss private banking division, according to a report in the Economic Times.

The letter, jointly signed by Petra Meheim Quick, HSBC’s deputy general counsel in Switzerland and Stephen Barney, director of the private bank, blamed “administrative errors” owing to Ambani’s former involvement with Flat Telecom, which had a commercial account with the bank.

The contents of the letter were described to the publication and read as follows:

"During our internal review and investigation following the data theft, we have established that due to an administrative error your name has been incorrectly connected to certain accounts held with us which we would confirm to you were not connected with you either as holder or beneficial owner of these accounts. This erroneous information we believe might be part of the data to be shared with the Indian authorities.

"We can advise that the records have been corrected. Finally, after having reviewed our files, we can confirm that neither at the time of the data theft nor today you or Reliance Industries Limited have been or are the holder, or, from our records, the beneficial owner of any account with our bank in Switzerland."

The letter continued: "Clearly, we understand that this is not an acceptable situation for you. Please accept our unreserved apologies in this respect.”

An HSBC spokesperson told WealthBriefingAsia: “On account of customer confidentiality, we are unable to comment on this.”

Last year this publication reported here that the Indian government was examining a list holding details of the undisclosed offshore accounts of nearly 700 wealthy Indian individuals of HSBC Private Bank’s Swiss arm, in a bid to flush out tax evaders.

The information reportedly contains account numbers, names and addresses as given in the passports of the holders.


“The accounts relate to an old case which occurred between 2006 and 2007, when our Swiss bank was a victim of criminal data theft by a former employee. Only Swiss-based accounts were affected,” said a spokesperson for HSBC Private Bank at the time.

The Indian government was handed the details of the accounts by the French government last year, which received the information from a former employee of HSBC, Herve Falciani. Falciani is alleged to have stolen details on an estimated 80,000 account holders of various nationalities while working within the bank’s IT department and subsequently fled to France to escape the attentions of Swiss investigators. Around 6,600 names are believed to be UK-based and 7,000 were from Italy, while 1,500 are believed to be Spanish residents.