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FALCIANI'S LIST
Start date: Aug 26, 2013, End date: Feb 26, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Over the last five years, a global system of tax evasion and havens, worth up to €30 trillion, or half the world's wealth, has been laid bare, thanks to a combination of banking whistleblowers, intelligence agents, eager prosecutors, reforming politicians and an angry public.One of the figures at the centre of these events is a Franco-Italian whistleblower. In 2008, Hervé Falciani left his job at the Swiss branch of HSBC. In this briefcase: the bank's entire database of 130,000 named back accounts, from 180 countries.A manhunt followed: Falciani was pursued across France, Switzerland and Spain by the Swiss authorities out to get him for data theft.Falciani's list was seized by the French finance ministry and copies of it were given to world governments.Each government investigated or didn't investigate the list in its own way.The French government claims to have recouped €1bn by just making phone calls to the names on the list.Now Falciani is working with French tax officials to uncover the systems used for tax evasion by those on his list, while the Swiss Attorney General will prosecute him for economic espionage in spring 2014.In Spain, the list named the president of the bank of Santander, one of the richest men in Spain, who had apparently hidden €400m.The Greek reaction was somewhat different: the finance ministers hid it in their desk drawers.The Germans turned the list down.We have 100% access not only to Falciani but also to the Swiss federal prosecutor, a female detective who has been trying to arrest Falciani for five years. We have the French prosecutor from Nice, who went around the law to send Falciani's data to Paris and got it distributed around the world.The film interweaves the dramatic story of Falciani with the inside story of the war against tax evasion and shows how this war has gained increased gravity over the years. It also casts an eye on the post-war history of tax evasion, financial crisis and austerity.

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