I was interviewed for this story in Accountancy Age:

Offshore tax probe hits the buffers

I'm not mentioned in the resulting piece. And I really don't care: that's what happens with 50% of all interviews, and it's part of life.

I do care that the story is so very obviously wrong. I don't for one minute believe that HMRC's:

crackdown on offshore accounts is facing mounting problems this week, as the timetable drags on attempts to hit tax evaders hard.

Indeed, far from it. I believe it is going well. At least as well as can be expected given the enormous scale of abuse that has been discovered. And the fact that no prosecution has yet been announced is entirely appropriate. I'd expect it to take at least two years for investigations to get to that stage, and I've done my fair share of tax investigations in my time.

So what's the real story here? Bluntly it's this: that the Big 4 want to undermine this enquiry. Last weekend we had PWC blatantly calling for offshore investigations to be halted. Put it another way and that's asking for a licence to tax evade. There's no other reasonable interpretation.

Now we have E & Y saying:

On a score of one to ten I would probably give the investigation six to six and a half,' said Bob Brown, global leader for tax and investigations for Ernst & Young.

'The quality of information [on offshore accounts] is not as good as they thought and they lack enough experienced investigators to run with this,' he said.

Of course, if E & Y cooperated the Revenue might have rather more of the information they need. I think it very unlikely that they are. What they will actually be doing is going as slowly as possible and delaying supplying information for as long as possible. The reason is obvious. As HMRC say:

We have opened enquiries into nearly 12,000 offshore accounts and will proceed with a further 79,000 over the next two years. We always knew the scale of the offshore disclosure project would be significant and we are fully resourced to carry it through.

I'm sure that's true. But PWC and E & Y are doing their damnedest to make sure as many cases are not being opened as possible, I'm sure. Delay on already open cases will help that objective by tying up HMRC resources. And creating bad publicity for HMRC is designed, I have no doubt, to bring the process to a premature end when what HMRC are actually doing is a vital job protecting society from those who perpetrate fraud.

Frankly these firms disgust me. It's in all our interests that offshore abuse stops. But these firms sell it and they protect it.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If taxation is the foundation of democratic government then the four biggest threats to democracy in the world are not North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. They're PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, Deloittes and KPMG.

These firms work deliberately and ruthlessly to undermine the taxation revenues due to democratic governments. I can think of very little that can do more to destroy society as we know it and have enjoyed it. As such they are a cancer destroying our democratic way of life. And like all cancer they need to be cut out and destroyed as soon as possible if the patient is to have any chance of recovery.