The thin line between Mbete and HSBC

Bad advice - there's an awful lot of it going around right now.

From those who told cockroach-exterminator-in-chief Baleka Mbete that it wouldn't be a big deal if she called the cops into parliament, to the lawyers who advised banking giant HSBC to threaten this newspaper with dire consequences should we publish the names of any of the 585 South Africans with secretive Swiss bank accounts, it has been a week of numbskull suggestions.

In a hostile three-page letter last week, law firm Cliff Dekker Hofmeyr, for HSBC, told this newspaper to hand back all records to the bank "within 24 hours" and said all hard copies of the lists must be "immediately destroyed". Needless to say, we didn't take that advice.

Nonetheless, there were a few interesting features in that letter.

For a start, this threat did not emanate from HSBC's South African office. HSBC's local company secretary, Isabel Correia, said the letter came "from the Swiss office and was nothing to do with us".

That instruction, it seems, was given to the South African lawyers by HSBC's solicitors in London, where the bank is headquartered.

Yet this heavy-handed threat was in direct contrast to the hand-wringingly apologetic approach which HSBC took internationally.

Not only did it take out full-page adverts in British newspapers last week "apologising" for its past, it also sent out grovelling letters to journalists admitting that "the old business model of Swiss private banking is no longer acceptable".

Perhaps HSBC thinks the strong-arm approach works better in the colonies. Either way, for HSBC to think it could bully a South African newspaper to hush up the names behind closed doors, while at the same time publicly begging for forgiveness in the global spotlight, reeks of hypocrisy.

Patrick Humphris, a spokesman for HSBC's private bank in Switzerland, says there was no intention to single South Africa out for special attention. "There was a very consistent global approach. Our primary concern was to protect the interests of clients who had done nothing wrong," he said.

To some extent, Humphris has a point. After all, many South Africans on the list had entirely legitimate accounts in Switzerland. These weren't the guys who used the secrecy of the Swiss banks to duck exchange controls or dodge tax.

For example, Macsteel's Eric Samson, the 76-year-old billionaire, had businesses in Europe, so it's entirely conceivable that he could have had $59-million legitimately in Switzerland. Pick n Pay's former boss, Sean Summers, emigrated years ago, and was also entirely within his rights.

So what was the public interest?

Well, for one thing, it's very clear that in some cases, HSBC's Swiss bank did help clients dodge tax. This is clear from its admission that some people "took advantage of bank secrecy to hold undeclared accounts", which meant they "may not have fully met" their tax obligations.

The truth is, HSBC was far from a passive onlooker in the tax dodging.

Take the case of Emmanuel Shallop, who was convicted in Belgium in 2010 of facilitating trade in blood diamonds in Sierra Leone.

Luckily, HSBC kept detailed notes of meetings it had with Shallop.

The bankers who met Shallop said he was "very cautious currently because he is under pressure from the Belgian tax authorities who are investigating his activities in the area of diamond tax fraud".

In South Africa, client files list discussions, such as this one from a 2004 meeting in Durban's Hilton Hotel: "Our meeting was very pleasant and most of the discussion concerned the recently announced tax amnesty ... [the client was] very concerned as to whether he should declare his assets with us or not."

There are similar red flags in a number of files, which is why the SA Revenue Service (SARS) says it has picked up a number of cases where South Africans may have used their Swiss accounts to avoid paying tax.

This would be a boost for the tax authority at a time when it is under heavy strain. SARS insiders say the unfortunate departure of highly rated investigator Johann van Loggerenberg meant that a number of high-profile cases he worked on have all but ceased - including the illicit tobacco investigation and a tax probe into the Nkandla tenders.

This week, Nhlanhla Nene will present his annual budget, which will reveal just how short SARS has fallen of its targets. The HSBC list, which the tax authority is now poring over, won't solve this problem - but it may help ease the sting.