A massive leak reveals the Swiss banking secrets of drug cartels, arms dealers and dictators

In 2007, IT technician Hervé Falciani of the Swiss arm of British bank HSBC fled to France with a massive treasure trove of banking data stolen from his former employer — including account information for many of the world's richest tax evaders. An investigation by the Guardian, the French paper Le Monde, BBC Panoramaand other journalists working with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists dug through those files and come to some astonishing conclusions: + Bloomberg reports that the full list of account holders include "drug cartels, arms dealers, tax evaders and fugitive diamond merchants," as well as "terror suspects" and people linked to autocratic regimes. + HSBC provided a secret account for Frantz Merceron, political operative for the late Haitian President Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who was accused of embezzling hundreds of millions before fleeing his country. + A finance minister who fled Egypt during the 2011 protests against then-President Hosni Mubarak, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, had an account worth $31 million.