George Monbiot has hit the tax haven theme in the Guardian today:
If you want to know why Britain has never completed the process of decolonisation, look at two lists side by side. One is the official register of tax havens, compiled by the OECD. The other is the list of British overseas territories and crown dependencies. Over a quarter of the world's tax havens are British property. More than half of Britain's colonial territories and dependencies are tax havens. Strip out Antarctica, the military bases and the scarcely habited rocks and atolls and, of the 11 remaining properties, only the Falkland Islands is not a recognised haven. The obvious conclusion is that Britain retains these colonies for one purpose: to help banks, corporations and the ultra-rich to avoid tax.
In his usual style he adds:
Last month the British government announced that it will introduce new laws to prevent piracy: the armed forces will be allowed to detain ships and arrest suspected robbers on the high seas. Yet the same government offers an attractive portfolio of tropical and temperate islands in which pinstriped pirates can bury their treasure. That comparison is unfair - to pirates. The freebooters who use these havens are responsible for thousands of times more deaths even than the notorious Abdul Hassan, known on the Somali coast as "the one who never sleeps".
And to reinforce my opinion that Gordon Brown bears an enormous responsibility for this:
Gordon Brown wrings his hands over the plight of the poor, and urges impoverished countries to earn more money through trade. But by keeping our tax havens open for business, this mumbling Christian hypocrite ensures that even when the poor nations do trade successfully, they are unable to keep hold of the income.
True. And he predicts there will be little change:
There is a standard British procedure for dealing with problems like this - by which I mean problems that generate bad publicity but which you don't want to address. You commission a review and you choose the right man to conduct it. Confronted with a vocal international campaign and a new US president determined to tackle this issue, the government has selected a man called Michael Foot (not the former Labour leader).
Until last year, Foot was the inspector of banks and trust companies for the Central Bank of the Bahamas in Bermuda, a British tax haven. Though the review was launched only a fortnight ago, he already seems to have decided what it will say. Speaking about tax havens to the magazine Accountancy Age, he claimed that they had been given a clean bill of health by the IMF, and observed, "I can't see where the regulation failure is supposed to be." The Tax Justice Network maintains that throughout his long career in Bermuda, at the Financial Services Authority and elsewhere, he has never raised any public concerns about systemic problems in the financial sector. The identity of the person the government appoints is an index to the outcome it desires. Foot sounds like just the man for the job.
I hope he's wrong.
But if he isn't, let's be clear: we've laid the groundwork now for saying so. And we will.
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In other words you will criticise and condemn the report if it doesn’t say what you want it to say, yet it will be undertaken by somebody who will have had access to the real facts when you only have access to your own fiction and innuendo. I know which one I would rely on.
But hey there’s nothing like keeping an open mind is there Richard ?
Central Bank of the Bahamas in Bermuda
Well now – I never knew that! Let’s hope that Monbiot’s thinking isn’t all of this standard!
David
I would not put a drunk in charge of a bar, nor a hardened criminal in charge of a jail.
Using the same criteria I would not appoint a man offshore financial institutions in charge of a review about their future. Of course Michael Foot is neither a drunk or a hardened criminal but it is obvious that he is compromise ethically with regard to this issue, and that conflict cannot be resolved.
Whatever access he does, therefore, have to facts he is undoubtedly unable to objectively appraise them: he has vested interest in the outcome and as anybody would know, this precludes any chance of an objective report being prepared.
Then , as I understand it, there is the second issue that he is apparently only asking for opinion from the governments of the places that he is reviewing. In the opinion of most this will not be the place to go to find facts. Most are appallingly lax with regard to their own administration ( as the National Audit Office has shown), , most consciously refuse to maintain data on the entities that they register, and they are therefore quite unable to provide objective data.
In that case we will, inevitably be trading in opinion. That means both sides must be represented if an objective answer is to be obtained.
In that circumstance I think I’m showing an open mind. It is yours that is closed. I am willing to hear both opinions. It appears you are not. How open-minded is that?
Richard
Richard my mind is not closed. I am merely confident of knowing that Mr. Foot will not find anything of concern to report. You on the other hand are saying that even if he does find nothing to report then he has obviously been “bought” !
The fact that somebody has regulated an offshore environment makes him more qualified, not less qualified, to undertake the report. At least he understands what he is looking at.
David
Conflicts of interest clearly don’t concern you, do they?
Richard