Last week the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a team of journalists from 45 countries, published leaked information about secret bank accounts at the Swiss branch of HSBC Private Bank.
The over 60,000 files relate to accounts holding more than $100 billion in total and provide information about more than 100,000 clients, their accounts and the amounts of money hidden in Switzerland, far away from their national tax authorities. The data was first given to the French government and the newspaper ‘Le Monde’ in 2008 already by a whistle-blower from HSBC and later shared with the ICIJ.
The two cartograms shown on this page reveal the global picture that emerges from the leaked data: They show the countries of the world resized according to the total number of clients and the absolute value of their accounts allocated to their respective country of origin:
