“The tax authorities can use the list Falciani” Legitimate checks on the data stolen – BBC

Milan , April 29, 2015 – 10:11

Fabrizio Massaro

     
     
 

MILAN After five years to get the Supreme Court to clarify the value of the list in Falciani tax proceedings. Yesterday the sixth Civil Chamber presided by Mario Cicala, whose rapporteur Roberto Giovanni Conti, established the principle that the data contained in the list of computer stolen by former HSBC Geneva, Herve Falciani, can be used in a tax assessment on the part of ‘ Inland Revenue even if they come from a crime. Falciani illegally took away the data to the Swiss bank, so that is on trial in Geneva for this.

But the ordinance states that “can be used in contradiction with the taxpayer data bank acquired by disloyal employee of a banking institution, without which take place relevant any offense committed by the employee same and the violation of the right to confidentiality of bank data (that does not enjoy protection against the tax authorities). ” The decision overturns several decisions of the provincial and regional tax commission and has an immediate effect not only in the process by which it was born, but in all those still pending based on the list Falciani. There are about 7,500 Italian customers with accounts opened at HSBC Private Bank in Switzerland, with about 7.4 billion deposited. From the List of Finance has initiated 3,276 interventions inspection contesting 750 million tax undeclared.

Of the decision will also facilitate the criminal investigation underway in Turin, the first Italian Prosecutor who managed in 2010 to get the data. The investigation entrusted to prosecutor Alberto Perduca has been further fueled by the so-called “second” Falciani list, or from the new data arrived from Spain in 2014 the result of a reworking of material copied from Falciani between 2006 and 2008. But as early as 2013 the Supreme Court had allowed the usability of documents, even if illegally acquired, as a basis for criminal investigation, like the anonymous letters.

There is a further positive effect on the Italian tax authorities, the Advocate Asa Peronace , who attended the taxpayer – a professional poker player – the process which gave rise to the order yesterday: “The principle of law established by the Supreme Court inevitably pushes those who have money abroad to resort to the voluntary disclosure “, ie the complaint voluntary capital hidden abroad by paying taxes but avoiding the crime. And it does so because it establishes the principle that the use of leaked documents does not cause an injury of constitutionally guaranteed rights, particularly the right to privacy, as the banking secrecy was abolished and privacy gives way to the constitutional duty (art. 53) to pay taxes: “The way I see it is a decision more political than legal,” says the lawyer, “this does not make sense to escape the voluntary moving the capital in other tax havens. Why just that an employee infidel or a hacker accesses the data and deliver them to the authorities to be applicable to the tax authorities. ”

April 29, 2015 | 10:11

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