The HSBC Swiss bank is not an isolated episode. It is part of a general pattern exposing the underlying ideology which has been globally dominant over the last three decades. That ideology has been about consolidating the power and wealth of the world’s richest class, particularly in the West. It is based around the idea that the most efficient and successful way to run the world is through untrammeled markets freed to the highest possible degree of any external constraints. Continue reading
Tagged with The Rich
How we should get tougher on the tax cheats
The revelations in the Guardian, BBC Panorama and elsewhere are truly staggering. It shows how a HSBC-owned private bank in Switzerland actively colluded with hyper-rich clients to enable them to avoid EU taxes, to conceal undeclared ‘black’ accounts from their domestic tax authorities, to help them withdraw bricks of cash in foreign currencies so as to launder huge sums of money from tax havens for use in their own countries without paying tax (used most notoriously by the British clothing tycoon and restaurateur Richard Caring to withdraw 5 million Swiss francs, equal to £2.25m, from his Geneva bank on one day in 2005), and to provide accounts for international criminals and corrupt businessmen.
HSBC have defended themselves by saying they have now improved their standards of due diligence, but the truth is that this massive outburst of tax fiddling, a microcosm of the global tax cheating, would still be continuing today but for the whistleblowing by an IT worker at the bank who hacked into the Swiss bank’s 30,000 accounts and fled with them to France.
There are several profoundly serious lessons to be drawn from this episode. Continue reading
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Introducing Stefano Pessina, billionaire tax dodger, who says Labour is bad for Britain
Shiver me timbers, a billionaire businessman provides the party for billionaires some much-needed succour by attacking Ed Miliband and Labour as a ‘catastrophe for Britain‘. Stefano Pessina, the chief executive of Boots says a Labour government would “not helpful for business, not helpful for the country and in the end it probably won’t be helpful for them”. Why’s that Stefano? “….” Silence. Nothing. The comment is undeveloped. If the Telegraph were reporting something off the cuff, or a line from a press release, that’s just about excusable. This however was a full interview. The hacks pressed him to elaborate but refused to be drawn on specifics. Stefano thereby wasted his opportunity to wound Labour’s pro-business creds in favour of unspecified ad hominem. You might say he Pessed his chance up the wall. Continue reading
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Obama imposing $300bn levy on banks & hyper-rich: how about UK?
It is remarkable t
hat in the citadel of capitalism Obama has just unveiled a plan to impose a levy on the biggest banks and on the wealthiest families that is expected to raise $300bn, yet in Europe any such idea is taboo. In the US the new tax is being crafted to affect only the richest 1%, with 80% of the impact falling on the richest 0.1%. The levy will also set a fee of 0.07%on the liabilities of a hundred financial institutions with assets of $50bn, which would have the added benefit of deterring banks from taking on excessive leverage as well as reducing the risk of defaults. Why isn’t such a skilfully targeted measure being considered here? Continue reading
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Blair pays less tax as business continues to boom (for him)
Tony Blair (trading as Tony Blair Associates or TBA) suffered a in profits last year according to the accounts of some of the principal companies in his complex network of companies and partnerships he maintains, presumably to obscure his true ‘worth’ and earnings and to limit his tax liabilities. Profits of Windrush Ventures limited dropped from £2.8m to £1,2m (as a result of which tax paid fell from £514,000 to £293,000) although turnover held up well (dropping from £14.9m to £14.2m). The Financial Times says of these arrangements: Continue reading
