Swiss Leaks: journalists should not ask for “lists”; no data to be turned over to governments
Marina Walker, deputy director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has tweeted: Journos should not ask the ICIJ for Swiss Leaks “lists”. There is no such thing. This is a journalistic investigation. And it is complex.
The ICIJ has apparently been inundated with requests from news organisations and journalists all over the world for lists of names. So it has put together a list of FAQs explaining what seems obvious, but isn’t: 1. they’re not a law enforcement agency, 2. they won’t turn over data to governments, 3. the data isn’t conveniently organised into lists of offenders on a state by state basis. Not in so many words, but that’s the gist anyway.
The link is below.
Names, details and related information were not released to governments originally in 2010 by the ICIJ, but by the French government which was the first to have the data in its possession (the HSBC contractor who took the information is a French citizen). This was strictly government-to-government communication, and as far as I can make out through the newspaper reports, mainly intra-EU – though Tonio Fenech, the finance minister at the time, says that no such communication was made with the Maltese government.
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http://www.icij.org/blog/2015/02/swiss-leaks-frequently-asked-questions-answered
And the latest news suggests that UBS is also involved. Isn’t aubs represented in Malta by Crystal Finance?
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/share/uuid/1882a3be-b3a5-11e4-b408-e9d7291095ad
UBS was already in trouble and had paid a heavy fine in the US.
Breaking news: Lord Green has resigned.
Ah, the exigency of a looming general election.
Hervé Falciani (French citizen) first tried to pass the information on to the Swiss government, who declined it.
How perverse is that? It was then that he passed it on to the French finance ministry, at the time headed by Christine Lagarde (Strauss Kahn’s polar opposite, if ever there was one).
She’s a capitalist with a conscience, and that was when the government-to-government information sharing started.
Switzerland demanded that the French government hand the information back, and eventually it did (after the election of a “Socialist” president, hooray hooray). Lagarde was by then IMF chief and there was nothing she could do.
And what was Strauss Kahn doing?
Having it off with supermodels and not-so-super chambermaids.
Oh and by the way: DSK-Bartolone-Hollande-Muscat.