A list of leaked Swiss bank accounts is making news in Belize tonight. And that's because the list shows that 97 Belizean bank accounts holding 54.8 million US dollars are hidden away in these accounts. Now, in a country like Belize with an active offshore banking sector, that's not too unusual, but what jumped out at us is the disclosure that nine of the accounts are held not by offshore companies, but by persons with Belizean passports.
Information released by a group of journalists called Swiss Leaks says that about 17 million dollars is controlled by those 9 Belizean passport holders, and the largest single account is for one Belizean with 8.9 million US dollars. All the accounts on the list were formed between 1999 and 2006.
Now, to put it in context, this list has been dominating headlines in Europe for the past week -the accounts linked to Belize rank the holdings of this country at #115 out of over 200 countries.
The list is built on a trove of 60,000 leaked files that provide details on over 100,000 clients of the international banking giant HSBC with combined holdings of over 119 billion dollars. The disclosure of the list is causing global shockwaves in developed and developing countries.
In Venezuela, for example a former treasury minister and ex-bodyguard of late President Hugo Chavez is linked to an HSBC account holding billions of dollars. The list also includes 30 Caribbean countries, led by The Bahamas, where 55 Bahamian citizens or passport holders were associated with accounts at HSBC.
But, coming back to Belize, the number is nine - and the question is, who are those nine? Well, the SWISSLEAKS website, organized by an international consortium of investigative journalists is not releasing the entire list at this time - though there is pressure on them to do so. That includes a request from 7News to get the Belize names.
SWISSLEAKS stresses that there are legitimate uses for Swiss Bank accounts, and there is no direct suggestion of implication that account holders are law breakers.
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