The documents were first leaked by former HSBC employee Hervé Falciani who stole and distributed information about thousands of bank customers. Whistleblower Falciani said the data shows that customers, as well as bank officials, acted unethically.
HSBC is suspected of helping thousands of customers hide money from various tax officials around the world, helping them to evade hundreds of millions of euros. An investigation into the bank is underway in countries that include France, Argentina and Belgium.
Faliciani's massive leak contains information about more than 100,000 banking customers from more than 200 countries. Some of the data reaches back decades, but specific information about customer accounts is from years 2006 to 2007. Swiss authorities said they want to talk to Falciani, who has since "gone underground" and is reportedly assisting authorities on the matter in France.
Who's on the list?
People with Finnish ties were either Finnish citizens, people born in Finland and people who have lived in the country. Roughly half of the Finns’ data that was breached also included personal, customer and account data, the highest sum of money in their accounts during 2006 to 2007, as well as private customer-bank correspondence.
Ten of the people with Finnish ties were found to have close to one million euros in their accounts during that period. The Finn found to have most assets then was a housewife born in Jyväskylä who now lives in the Middle East. She had more than 4 million euros in her HSBC account.
Four other Finnish "housewives" were also on the list, one still reportedly lives in Kaunianen and the rest live abroad. Three of the women had spouses who also had HSBC accounts. Others on the leaked list include CEOs, a Formula One driver, a Finnish construction company, engineers and pensioners.
The most famous of names on the list belongs to Formula One driver Heikki Kovalainen who had just more than 100,000 euros in his HSBC account in 2006-2007. According to wealth tracking website TheRichest, the race car driver was estimated to be worth some 22 million euros in 2012.
Finnish public tax data shows that Kovalainen last had taxable income in Finland in 1998, when he earned 1,529 euros and paid 13 euros in taxes.
The Finnish Tax Administration has unsuccessfully tried to get the Falciani list from French authorities.
The ICIJ is a global network of 185 investigative journalists in more than 65 countries who collaborate on in-depth investigative stories.