The former employee, Hervé Falciani, a French-Italian citizen, was arrested in July in Barcelona on an international warrant after the Swiss accused him of stealing the data and breaching the country’s banking secrecy laws. He had previously fled Switzerland for France, which bought the data from Mr. Falciani and distributed relevant parts of it to countries including Germany, Spain and the United States.

The National Court ordered Mr. Falciani’s release from a Madrid jail because he had already been held there for several months and it could still take a considerable length of time to rule on the extradition request. Mr. Falciani will have to report to the Spanish police every three days and his passport has been confiscated.

Mr. Falciani is alleged to have stolen the customer data five years ago, while working in the information technology department of HSBC’s private banking subsidiary in Geneva.

Switzerland’s extradition request presented a dilemma for Spain, given that the Spanish authorities had used the HSBC data against holders of secret bank accounts including Emilio Botín, the chairman of Banco Santander, and 11 relatives.

The National Court eventually closed the case against the Botíns without filing any charges because the family had normalized its tax situation before the fraud investigation was announced. People close to the family said the Botíns paid about €200 million, or $265 million, in back taxes.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/business/global/bank-data-theft-suspect-allowed-out-of-jail.html?partner=rss&emc=rss