UK Labour leader Miliband says HSBC enabled tax avoidance on an 'industrial scale'

"It was in the public domain in September 2010 that HSBC was enabling tax avoidance on an industrial scale," Miliband said in parliament.

Addressing Prime Minister David Cameron during a weekly questions session, Miliband asked: "are we seriously expected to believe that when he made Stephen Green a minister four months later that he had no idea about these allegations?"

Green was chief executive and subsequently executive chairman of HSBC when much of the alleged evasion occurred. Cameron later made him a trade minister and put him in the British upper house of parliament.

After the leak this month of its Swiss bank's customer list, HSBC said its Swiss arm had not been fully integrated after its purchase in 1999, allowing significantly lower standards of compliance and due diligence to persist.

So far, Green, 66, has declined to comment.

Cameron did not directly answer Miliband's question, merely noting that former Labour leader Gordon Brown had appointed Green as one of his senior business advisors.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn, writing by Stephen Addison, editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

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