Some things are simply designed to induce anger. The Guardian's report this morning that H M Revenue & Customs are seeking to sack Osita Mba, the lawyer who whistle blew on the Goldman Sachs deal that has torn the credibility of Dave Hartnett and the senior management of our tax authority apart is one such thing.
Osita Mba has stood up for the rule of law, for accountability, for consistency, for competence and for the duty of the civil service.
Parliament has applauded his courage in doing so.
And HMRC want to sack him.
The wrong man's under threat.
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Goldmans are master financiers, they did a fake currency transaction with Greece to enable Greece to pass the entry test for the Euro. There is a website called Goldmansachs666 which details the long list strange transactions.
it looks like HMRC are following normal processes in order to identify the source of leaked documents. If he did leak but he has a whistleblowing defence then I guess this might be another test of that law. Might be better to save your anger (and your donations?) until the outcome of due process? In the meantime I guess you will have at least made representations to your MP? That at least might be more effective than a harrumph on your blog.
My MP supports every abuse possible
And as a matter of fact seems to think whatever I say wrong
I guess I reciprocate
We both treat the other as Marmite – but only one of us is the real thing
You’re missing the point. This was not an anonymous leak but a public interest disclosure to a Select Committee of the House of Commons. So he identified himself in the evidence and the Committee published it so it’s difficult to see what “leak” HMRC is investigating. Shouldn’t they be investigating the allegations by the whistleblower? Talk of shooting the messenger!
As I have said before, goldman employees and ex-employees seem to be everywhere.
Look in all the various ngo’s represented at the latest climate-fest and somewhere there is a gs rep…
“master financiers” is a bit of nonsense really, not like “master mason” or similar.
“master fiddlers” may be accurate.
In any case, their action against the w-blower is more to deter others than punish the current blower….did Mr Hartnet ever work for gs…..yet…?
HMRC’s interpretation of the law on confidentiality is rather curious. It is fundamental principle of our law that (in the words of Page Wood V-C in Gartside v Outram (1856) 26 LJ Ch 113 at 114) “a man cannot be made the confidant of a crime or a fraud.”
And then there’s the little matter of Parliamentary privilege (which covers whistleblowing to Select Committees) over above the protection provided under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998.
Richard is quite right. The wrong man is under threat but I suspect it’s just face-saving fighting talk by HMRC.
Don’t throw an 1856 case into the equation – next you will have us believeing that Duke of Westminster is the definitive word on tax avoidance.
No, the Duke of Westminster was not based on any principle but the whim and class prejudice of judges espcially Tomlin LJ. The rule against iniquity is based on sound principle. Indeed subsequent cases such as Beloff v Pressdram Ltd [1973] 1 All ER 241 at 260 per Ungoed-Thomas J and Lion Laboratories Ltd v Evans [1984] 2 All ER 417 at 432-433 per Griffiths LJ have extended the principle to all matters of which disclosure is required in the public interest regardless of whether a crime or a fraud is involved.
Richard, thank you for highlighting this important issue. Under US law, whistleblowers receive a minimum of 15% and a maximum of 30% of tax recovered from their public interest disclosure. We don’t have to do the same here but we should at least support those that risk their lives and careers to speak out. How I wish someone in the FSA spoke out before RBS cost us £45 billion!
Whitehall is known for its inertia and as a result the public interest is undermined all the time by vested interests while civil servants think about their job security and pension. It’s extremely difficult to blow the whistle in Whitehall. So the departments and the regulators are captured by big business and the public is none the wiser. Billions were lost in White elephant IT contracts and other frauds but nobody ever takes responsibility because insiders with the facts don’t speak out. So it is easy for the captured NAO to cover it up. From the look of things they buried the Goldman case in their initial report but thanks to the whistleblower they’ve now reopened the inquiry and will apparently look at Vodafone again. That has got to be a good thing for the public. Thanks for highlighting this, Richard.
What more proof do you need who the government paymasters are and whose interests they serve?
It explains why, in the USA, and increasingly over here, they are doing their damndest to silence the Occupy Wall street protest movements.
They are terrified we will see who is truly responsible for the mess we are in.
The Guardian is reporting that an HMRC insider is reporting that the reason for the action is that it breaches ‘…section 18 of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2004 states that information held by the organisation must be held purely for the business of the organisation.’
It seems that HMRCs view (and it would be wouldn’t it) is that this takes precedent over disclosure to a Parliamentary Committee.
Amazing….
Ironically a major rationale for the confidentiality rules now found sec 18 CRCA was to prevent information flowing into Ministers hands so that powerful companies/ individuals would not be able to influence the fair / even handed enforcement of taxation. This is why the rules are so tight.
Seems to me this was Hartnett’s stance before the committee: so if they did not take this line wrt staff who do disclose to parliamentary committees Hartnett would have even less credibility than he does now. Oh…..wait…..scratch that: it is probably not possible to have less than nothing
He broke ranks. The civil service punishes this, and always has. A brave man, but he knew the risks in the public sector – omertà is the key.
Too bad nobody broke ranks at the NHS to alert us to the squandering of 12 billion of taxpayers money by the state.
Any organisation, public or private, is inherently liable to become an “Old Boys Club”.
Hierarchies are established and it becomes a time-honoured principle that any progression up the chain of command also involves obedience and unquestioning allegiance to the structure — in too many moribund organisations this is known as “ambition”.
Violate the rules and become a pariah — no promotion and/or ultimately no job or pension.
Rather like living on an island tax haven — one accepts the conspiracy or a boat leaves in the morning.
I see that we have all been granted our wish (or part of it at least). Dave Hartnett is to retire in June.
Rather a pity though that he was not sacked for gross misconduct such that his no doubt considerable pension might have been foregone.
I think we got a very poor cash return from our investment in him.
Oh, and as a post script to my last comment, the new HMRC CEO – Lin Homer – was once head of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, perhaps the worst performing branch of government at the time. Still, I suppose one should give Lin the benefit of the doubt for a while – she could hardly be any worse that her utterly useless predecessor at HMRC Lesley Strathie (although I wish Lesley well with her health problems).
In 2005 Birmingham was declared to be a “banana republic” by the Election Commission.
For why?
Wholesale electoral fraud in the council elections.
The Election Commission ruled that Labour had been responsible for “massive, systematic and organised postal ballot fraud.”
He then made a few choice remarks about the Chief Returning Officer, also the chief executive of the council.
She had “thrown the rule book out of the window”.
To whom did he refer?
Why none other than Lin Homer.
Labour helped her out by making her head of the UK Borders Agency.
This being the very same UKBA that threw the rule book out of the window and relaxed border controls.
Lin, clearly a career minded woman, moved on from there this summer (just before the shit hit the fan) and became Permanent Secretary at the Department of Transport.
Now she moves to HMRC!
http://hmrcisshite.blogspot.com/
This is truely shocking, what is the point of having whistleblower protection if this cannot protect you.
Over the last few years, we have seen a kind of privatisation of the HMRC board. Hartnett is one of the last career civil servants; the rest have been recruited directly from the private sector for their ‘expertise’. I don’t think we can call this an unqualified success considering the department’s performance and catastrophically low morale of staff. Had to smile when they appointed a former Barclay’s executive (Graham Brammer) as Director for Debt Management and Banking. No irony in one of Britain’s foremost proponents of tax avoidance having one of their own in a key seat on the HMRC board then?
Precisely
The failure has been of governance
“This is harassment and is completely unacceptable.”
Why would any one want to whistle blow a taxpayer, if this is the way the revenue treat it’s own staff.
Bullying and harassment are the early signs that the organisation has a lot yet to be uncovered, so they are warning any other staff who are going to attempt whistle blowing.
So much for fairness.
Osita Mba, please support him for the sake of justice.
* Email address – osita.mba:@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk
* College – St Anne’s (Oxford)
* Subject studied at Oxford – BCL
* Year of matriculation – 2002
* Current occupation – Lawyer, Solicitor’s Office, Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, London
* Other information – Barrister and Solicitor (Nigeria); Solicitor (England and Wales)
Slightly off topic, but it is about Goldman Sachs. YouTube clip of trader talking in BBC News.
“The Collapse Is Coming…And Goldman Rules The World”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqN3amj6AcE
“Goldman has just started selling European bank stocks to its clients, whom it is telling to buy European bank stocks. Said otherwise, the stolpering of clients gullible enough to do what Goldman says and not does, has recommenced. Our advice, as always, do what Goldman’s flow desk is doing as it begins to unload inventory of bank stocks. Translation: run from European bank exposure”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/goldman-raises-european-banks-underweight-neutral
What are the chances Hartnett getting a cushy job as a consultant with some financial outfit?
If I get hired as a security guard, and while working I change the alarm system hire new guard dogs, and then by some miracle the premises I was guarding is robbed clean, We could be excused for making a mistake in the alarm system and choice of guard dogs, but if I leave that job and go to work for people who were mysteriously enriched during the period of my security duties It would raise suspicions,
This is true: For private business.
Not so for government.
Possibly he will “cross the divide” and be employed by some large telecommunications outfit, who knows ?
Like Vodaphone ….
Sorry, I thought Hartnett had been a consultant for PWC and Barclays for the last 5 years at least.
I suspect he might go and work for Goldmans who will have him installed as British PM at some point, perhaps after a stint on secondment at the EU where he can write the new eurozone tax code.