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By Katharina Bart
ZURICH, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Swiss lawmakers plan to questionthe country's financial watchdog about HSBC's Swissbank to determine whether parliament needs to take a more activerole in investigation of a trove of details on alleged taxevasion by some of the bank's wealthy clients.
The Alpine nation's banking sector is back in the spotlightafter media reports said that customers of HSBC's Swisssubsidiary had been helped to conceal millions of dollars ofassets, sparking regulatory inquiries and an admission byEurope's largest lender of failings in compliance and controls
"The committee wishes to inform itself of the situationdirectly in order to be able to judge whether any parliamentaryaction is needed in terms of oversight," a control committee ofSwitzerland's upper house of parliament said in a statement.
The move is an unusual show of parliamentary influence overSwiss financial regulator FINMA, which said that it had takennote of the committee's decision and would make itself availablefor inquiries.
In addition to the tax evasion allegations sparked bywhistleblower Herve Falciani, a former IT employee at HSBC, thebank is also the subject of a separate criminal inquiry intoalleged money laundering, instigated by Geneva's publicprosecutor on Wednesday.
FINMA had first investigated HSBC as long as four years ago,when it criticised the bank's internal controls, and it said onThursday that two previously unpublicised investigations hadfound that HSBC violated money laundering guidelines.
The regulator said it had ordered remedial measures, whichHSBC implemented, though FINMA gave no further detail.
"These are cases from the past," the watchdog said onThursday. "FINMA has since investigated the bank's anti-moneylaundering procedures thoroughly."
The previous investigations have come to light at a timewhen FINMA is adopting a far more public approach to sanctioningerrant bankers under new head MarkBranson.
Ursula Cassani, a professor of law for the University ofGeneva, told Swiss television on Thursday that HSBC could face afine of up to 5 million Swiss francs ($5.28 million) if it isproved to have been complicit in money laundering, adding thatthe reputational fallout would be far more damaging.
Any individuals targeted by the criminal inquiry could faceup to five years in prison and a fine if found guilty, accordingto the law on aggravated money laundering.($1 = 0.9473 Swiss francs) (Additional reporting by Albert Schmieder and Maria Sheahan inZurich and Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by David Goodman)
