Stephen Green Denies Knowledge of HSBC Tax Evasion

Stephen Green
Stephen Green speaks at the Institute of Directors annual convention at the Albert Hall in London April 28, 2010. Luke MacGregor/Reuters

Stephen Green, the former Chairman of HSBC and government trade minister, has denied that he had any knowledge of tax avoidance at HSBC during his time running the bank.

In his first public comments since the existence of files containing names of alleged tax avoiders was revealed he said today: "I did not know about these files. This was a large, broad, complex company with a series of activities ... I always worked hard at setting high standards, I was dismayed at what happened and I have deep regret."

Of the bank he said: "I am proud of HSBC. Did we get everything right? Maybe not," he conceded.

In a surreal Lent lecture delivered to a crowd of less than 30 at St Michael's Church in the heart of Britain's financial sector, Green said he was "dismayed" at the tax evasion revelations, apportioning some of the blame to the size of the bank's operation.

The lecture was overshadowed by extraordinary scenes when a Channel 4 news team ambushed Green with a camera. The channel's chief correspondent Alex Thomson confronted Green about his relationship with British prime minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne.

As Thomson asked his question there was a scuffle in the aisle as churchgoers tried to push Thomson and his crew out of the church.

"Did you speak to George Osborne or David Cameron about those accounts? It's an important question!" shouted Thomson while one audience member Matthew Franklin attempted to push both men out of the church shouting: "This is a church! This is the Church of England!"

Thomson countered: "That's assault! Do not assault me in a church!"

Other comments made by the ordained priest in his address included his admittance that society had become "more questioning, more suspicious, more atomised".

Lord Green, who spent three decades at HSBC, was the bank's chief executive before becoming its chairman from May 2006 to December 2010. He has still not appeared in front of parliamentary committees investigating the bank's behaviour despite being in charge of the bank's Swiss subsidiary at the root of the scandal

A cache of files, originally leaked by systems engineer Hervé Falciani in 2007, revealed that HSBC's Swiss private bank - which Green oversaw - had assisted clients with the withdrawal of large amounts of foreign currency and the concealment of 'black' accounts from domestic tax authorities, among other practices. The files were handed to Britain's tax authority, Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) in May 2010, eight months before Green was appointed to a government position by Cameron.

In his lecture, Green referred to the biblical tax collector Zaccheus, calling him a man "with a profession even more unpopular" than bankers are now, who is "transformed by his encounter with the truth about himself" and "not told to give up his profession ... a man who is, crucially, not told to give up his profession, which would perhaps have been the all too easy populist response to his moral failings."

HSBC has defended itself against the accusations that it helped its clients evade tax, saying that even though it was "accountable for past control failures", it had now "fundamentally changed".

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