The Said Business School in Oxford is home to the 100 Group of Finance Directors sponsored Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation. This says its aim is to:
The Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation is an independent research centre which aims to promote effective policies for the taxation of business.
Read between the lines. Effective means 'low tax'.
I was therefore intrigued to read this in yesterday's Guardian:
Panorama revealed that the Ministry of Defence specifically processed, and may still be processing, quarterly invoices for £30m to Bandar. It so happens that the head of the relevant MoD sales unit, Alan Garwood, is a former BAE executive. He reports to Lord Drayson, the arms sales minister, who gave Labour £500,000 within weeks of being made a life peer in 2004 and described himself as "entrepreneur-in-residence" at the Said Business School in Oxford. Wafic Said was Bandar's aide in negotiating al-Yamamah and is assumed to figure among its many beneficiaries. That Blair should have made Drayson political overseer of the Bandar payments cannot be a coincidence.
Not a recommendation, is it?
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[…] Mike Devereux, Director of the Oxford Centre for Business Taxation sent me a mail following my blog in which I drew attention to the links between the Said Business School in which that Centre is located and Wafiq Said. Said is a close associate of Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia who, it has been suggested by the Guardian newspaper, has been in receipt of substantial payments from BAe that have been the subject of Serious Fraud Office investigation. Mike Devereux said: [A]s I am sure you realise, the Centre has no involvement whatsoever with any of the people named in your quote from The Guardian. I have no idea why you choose to attack the Centre in this way. […]
I think nobody would mind effective policies for the taxation of business 🙂 Perhaps our life would be a little bit easier.
[…] Devereux and Judith Freedman of the Oxford University Said Business School Centre for Business Taxation had an article in the Guardian this morning. I thought it curious they […]
[…] Devereux and Judith Freedman of the Oxford University Said Business School Centre for Business Taxation had an article in the Guardian this morning. I thought it curious they […]