HM Revenue and Customs has wound up its inquiries into claims that hundreds of British customers used HSBC's Swiss bank to evade tax, a senior official has admitted for the first time.
A public accounts committee hearing has been told there is no longer any criminal investigation despite claims that the banking arm had turned a blind eye to alleged illegal activities of wealthy individuals including arms dealers.
I admit to not being surprised at this outcome. It is well known that HMRC are not inclined to prosecute the wealthy. Tax is, after all, only for little people.
But I do have to wonder if there is more to this failure to prosecute HSBC clients and the bank itself for this disreputable period. Could the decision in any way be linked to rumours hitting the press a couple of days ago that:
HSBC Holdings Plc is likely to stay based in London rather than move its headquarters to Asia, according to Martin Gilbert, chief executive officer of one of the British bank's biggest shareholders.
It may all just be coincidence that these factors appear to be emerging at the same time.
I wish I did not have to put the emphasis on the 'may'. But I think I do. And I would think it very much worse than a failure to prosecute if that were true.
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Nobody in the Square Mile – or Canary Wharf – gives any credence to the idea that HSBC would move their HQ for China.
This story is and always was for consumption by the media and the second-tier lobby-fodder politicians.
It says something that the cynical calculation – an assumption of eager stupidity and gullibility in the target audience – has proven to be correct.
Could it also be because after he’d finished giving large corporates free rein to avoid taxes, Hartnett left HMRC and joined HSBC to supervise the internal cover up job HMRC have now ticked up?
This is probably stupid but in other cases where government bodies fail, people sometimes launch private prosecutions. Could some body (perhaps one doing tax research) take HSBC to trial behalf of tax payers? As I say, I have no idea about the legality but it really shouldn’t end here…
That would all come down to funding and time
I have neither
When I win the lottery… I probably still wouldn’t be able to afford justice.
Thanks for the answer and great work.
While I have sympathy with the argument for more prosecutions, I expect the lack of them is due primarily to the continued opaqueness and obscurity of the banking and tax regulations, while HMRC is more interested in collecting what little tax they can from the wealthy avoiders rather than committing to costly legal action with limited chance of success.
I haven’t watched the PAC committee hearing yet, but I would be surprised if the political mumblings from its members are anything more than a gesture of feigned anger for the public viewers. I do think the public committees are worthwhile as they help shed light on the failure of legislation to deal with reality, but the tax laws would have been changed long ago if there was true political will create more legal black and white rules for the prosecutors to work with.
The fact that 8 years on from the banking crisis there has been little change but more hot air, really says it all about the UK parliament’s and government’s lack of moral compass.