HM Revenue and Customs has recovered £135 million from 24,000 clients named on a list leaked by a former employee from HSBC’s Swiss private banking division, reports The Telegraph.

HM Revenue and Customs has recovered £135 million ($230.9 million) from 24,000 clients named on a list leaked by a former employee from HSBC’s Swiss private banking division, reports The Daily Telegraph.

Former HSBC employee Hervé Falciani committed what is believed to be one of the biggest thefts of banking data in history when he took data from around 130,000 customers with him when he left the firm in 2008.

HMRC told a parliamentary committee yesterday that it had recouped ÂŁ135 million and that one person had been prosecuted. Falciani said that he stole the data as he wanted to expose tax evasion. His actions led to a French probe into HSBC to determine whether it had helped French clients to avoid taxes, the newspaper said.

The amount recovered by the UK was substantially lower than the ÂŁ220 million retrieved by Spain and ÂŁ188 million by France, HMRC is quoted as saying. The organisation said that it had received strong enough data to pursue up to 3,800 taxpayers for payments and that 13 investigations were ongoing.

According to Swiss law, bankers, even if they think they are acting as whistleblowers, can be jailed for divulging client information. The case highlights the tension between the Alpine nation and a number of other European countries, notably Germany, the US and France, regarding the use of stolen data in tax investigations.

German authorities have used stolen information in a number of cases, raising concerns about whether countries using stolen data are abusing due process of law and compromising legitimate client privacy.

In the past, Germany has bought compact discs containing client names of Swiss-based banks. The purchases have been followed by tax investigations against hundreds of German taxpayers.

Last year, former Julius Baer IT worker Lutz Otte, a 54-year-old German national, was found guilty by the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona of economic espionage, money laundering and breaches of banking secrecy.

After agreeing a plea deal with prosecutors, Otte pleaded guilty in return for a three-year sentence, half of which was suspended.