SAN Banco Santander SA

By Jeannette Neumann in Madrid and John Letzing in Zurich 

Spanish police entered Banco Santander SA headquarters Friday to request documents as part of a broader judicial investigation into the once-secret financial data dispersed by a former employee of HSBC Holdings PLC.

Police sought the documents at Santander's headquarters in the town of Boadilla del Monte, about half an hour outside of Madrid, at the request of a National Court judge.

The judge is investigating financial data about HSBC clients dispersed by Hervé Falciani, a former employee at the Swiss branch of the bank.

At the request of National Court Judge José de la Mata, the Spanish police asked Santander to provide documentation "in connection with certain checking accounts" that the court is requesting information about "as part of the investigation of the so-called Falciani list," a spokesman for the National Court said by telephone.

He declined to provide additional details about the judge's investigation.

Santander confirmed in a statement that the bank had received a request for information about "movements of certain accounts between entities." Santander said it was providing authorities with available information.

Two spokespeople for the Spanish police confirmed agents had been at Santander's headquarters on Friday morning, but declined to provide details on how many were at Boadilla del Monte or the amount of documents they were seeking.

The data gathering by Spanish police at Santander's headquarters on Friday shows that the financial information released by Mr. Falciani continues to feed money-laundering investigations in Spain and other countries.

The data released by Mr. Falciani caused a stir in February 2015, when it was used by several media outlets to publish a series of stories about how HSBC allegedly helped high-profile clients use their Swiss accounts to avoid paying taxes. The bank said at that time that the Swiss business has been "overhauled."

In October 2015, as a Swiss criminal court was set to begin trying Mr. Falciani in absentia, he held a press conference over the border in France where he told journalists that he had been working with various tax officials and investigators seeking to track down undeclared Swiss accounts.

Switzerland's Federal Department of Finance had been receiving a flood of requests for assistance from foreign tax authorities using the HSBC-related data to pursue alleged tax evaders with Swiss accounts, a spokeswoman for the department told The Wall Street Journal that same month.

The department, the spokeswoman added, expected demand from authorities to increase in the future.

In November, Mr. Falciani was handed a five-year prison sentence in a federal criminal court in Switzerland, convicted of of aggravated industrial espionage. The court found that he had sought to offer stolen data about HSBC's clients to a handful of banks in Lebanon.

Write to Jeannette Neumann at jeannette.neumann@wsj.com and John Letzing at john.letzing@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 03, 2016 08:46 ET (12:46 GMT)

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