evidence: In this political context, the Falciani list posed an existential threat to the Swiss economy. The files had ended up in the possession of the French, but they contained incriminating details related to H.S.B.C. clients around the world. It was not long before other governments began asking the French to share information. Early in 2010, tax authorities in the United Kingdom asked if British taxpayers were on the list, and officials in Paris turned over several thousand names. That May, police in Italy announced that they had received details about Italian account holders. The scandal unfolded while Italy’s Prime Minister at the time, Silvio Berlusconi, was being investigated for tax fraud, and leaks to the press revealed that many prominent Italians were on the list, from a Roman princess to the jeweller Gianni Bulgari. The Italian press called it the elenco della vergogna—the list of shame. [...] The novelty and importance of the list lay more in its magnitude than in its confirmation of individual venality. Nevertheless, it was bracing to put human faces—many of them famous—on the story. The Guardian and other SwissLeaks participants revealed that the Falciani list included politicians, arms dealers, and people linked to terrorist financing and to the trade in blood diamonds. Stuart Gulliver, the C.E.O. of H.S.B.C., acknowledged that the list had become "a source of shame."